See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Daily
Following his murder, neighbors remembered Jeffrey Babbit as simply, “the sweetest.”
Those were the words of Igor Sapozhniko, who lived next door to the Sheepshead Bay man and his mother on the sixth floor of their Ocean Avenue apartment for thirteen years — until Monday.
The 62-year-old Babbit was attacked in Union Square on Sept. 3 in Union Square, not far from the comic book store Forbidden Planet, which he frequented on an almost daily basis, according to his neighbor.
Lashawn Marten, his alleged attacker and a total stranger, struck him after threatening to “punch the first white man” he saw, according to witnesses. He lashed out at the Sheepshead Bay man with one savage blow, and Babbit fell, striking his head on the pavement.
Babbit slipped into a coma, and doctors at Bellevue Hospital Center declared him brain dead less than a week later.
Sapozhniko was reluctant to describe Babbit as a friend, calling him merely his neighbor.
Despite that, he had nothing but the kindest things to say about Babbit, a former MTA worker and his 94-year-old mother’s sole caregiver.
“She would always tell me, ‘he’s my baby,’ ” Sapozhniko recalled. “They had so much love.”
He claims that Babbit never cursed, and never uttered “anything bad to anybody.”
Marten, at his arraignment following the assault, demanded that his bail be set at one penny, according to a DNA Info report.
He is now being held on $1 million bond.