Infamous Brooklyn house party goes quiet week after fatal shooting

It took the fatal shooting of a beloved dad to finally put a stop to a raucous weekly Brooklyn house party.

The usual all-night festivities were absent over the weekend, a week after Kelson Fleary, 37, was shot to death on Aug. 12 outside the three-story East New York home.

Fleary had been hanging out with friends in his Crown Heights neighborhood when he decided to go to the all-night bash — and his pals had no inkling they’d never see him again.

“He was here chilling with us making everybody laugh and someone keep calling on his phone. Somebody he knows. And he went over there,” said James Lafon, 33, who remembered his own past experiences at the weekly party as “chill” and drama-free.

“One of his other friends, they keep calling him and he went,” Lafon said.

The festivities at the house on on Louisiana Ave. just south of Linden Blvd. typically begin Friday evening and extend well into the morning hours of Saturday, neighbors said. The party was known on the block for its loud music and plenty of alcohol.

But neighborhood resident Luis Abreu, 33, said Saturday, after a quiet night, he believed the killing signaled the end of the wild nights.

“No more,” said Abreu on Saturday morning. “I think now no more.”

Fleary was leaving the party around 5:20 a.m. when he was trailed outside by a gunman and shot multiple times. Police said no arrests have been made as the investigation continues.

Surveillance footage viewed by the Daily News shows Fleary walking when the black-clad killer approaches him from behind and fires two shots at close range into the back of his head without warning.

After Fleary dropped to the ground, the shooter pointed the gun at his crumpled body and fired twice more before rounding the corner and walking off, the video shows. Fleary died at Brookdale University Hospital.

“He didn’t see this coming,” Ricky Gibson, who was cleaning up bottles when the shooting started and acknowledged he runs the regular parties at the house, told the Daily News after the slaying.

Fleary, known to all as “Peewee,” was a well-known and well-liked local figure in Crown Heights, said neighborhood resident Danny Gold, 40.

“He was a guy who everybody knew,” said Gold. “Always with a joke. Always funny. He would sit down and play dominoes with the old men or he would play games with the little kids. He was such a funny, happy guy … Everybody around here knew him and loved him.”

Fleary was born in Trinidad and lived in Brooklyn for about 20 years, attending Prospect Heights High School, where he met most of his friends, said Shernice Johnson, 30, a longtime family friend.

She said she saw him the night before the killing. “He said, ‘Be safe, ladies.’ The last moment we spoke to him he was wishing us safety. That’s the kind of person he was,” she recounted.

Fleary had an 11-year-old daughter and did construction work and other odd jobs to make ends meet, his friends recalled.

Relatives believe Fleary was just in the wrong place at the wrong time but cops say he was specifically targeted by the killer, though no motive has been established.

Gold recalled how the shooting resonated through the neighborhood.

“The entire block, the entire neighborhood was in mourning and shocked,” he said. “Peewee was loved around here. It’s appalling the way it happened. People around here had seen him that night and people have memories of hugging him and saying goodbye. The way he got killed was over nothing.”

A memorial of candles and liquor bottles appeared on the sidewalk on President St. off Franklin Ave. in Crown Heights to honor Fleary.

“Doesn’t seem like he has a care in the world,” Gold said of the video of the shooting. “Clearly no antagonism at all … There’s people around. And this guy just walks up and shoots him like it’s nothing.”

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The victim’s aunt Deborah Fernando, 57, said there were rumors that Fleary was targeted in a dispute involving the killer and a friend of Fleary’s.

“We were crying, we were screaming,” she said of the aftermath of the slaying. “We were in a lot of pain. We hope that they find [the killer].”

Residents had complained the parties began three years ago, with booming Caribbean music, heavy drinking and loud talking.

Since May, neighbors have filed 17 complaints about loud music, public urination and fireworks at the home to 311, city data shows.

Most of the recent 311 complaints were about noise. In an Aug. 4 complaint, the caller reported a house party guest urinating in the street onto a neighbor’s property.

“After the shooting, we have not heard any form of disturbance, music, no loud sounds,” local resident Antoinette Black, 49, said Saturday. “Nothing since then … Before that, every weekend. Loud noise, constant drinking, smoking — you name it.”

“This is only one weekend,” she added. “So I’m not sure if it stopped or if this is just an ease because of what happened. We’ll wait and see.”