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Mother Lives in Fear in Former Drug Den

A single mom raising two daughters in University Heights is now in fear for her life after unknowingly moving into a former drug den. She only learned of the apartment’s checkered history after someone fired four shots through her second-floor window.

The mother, who does not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, woke up to the sounds of gunfire through her window on University Avenue, near West Kingsbridge Road, at 2:45 a.m. on May 30.

Following the shooting, the startled mother and her 11-month-old and 9-year-old daughters huddled on the floor until police arrived.

“The family was in the room and everybody was sleeping,” as four shots crashed through the window, the mother recalled.  

Police would later remove three slugs from the window bars. One shot hit the apartment’s ceiling.

The woman said she moved into the building about a year and a half ago. Before that, she says, “crack dealers in this apartment ran the building.” Residents have since told her about, “Ramon,” who sold crack out of the apartment she now calls home.

Numerous attempts to contact the landlord of the building to ask how they could rent a former drug den to a single mother of two daughters, without letting her know, were unsuccessful.

Police did not respond to several inquiries about the incident and the apartment.   

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.

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