A man said that just days before his ex-wife was fatally shot in the head, he tried to warn his loved ones about his son’s bizarre behavior and remarks.
Now, 36-year-old Dashawn Coggins faces charges for allegedly shooting and killing his mother, 61-year-old Natalie Coggins, in her Queens home on March 29.
Coggins fled the scene after the shooting. Authorities found him in Brooklyn a few hours later where they recovered the murder weapon, as well. They charged him with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Coggins’ father said that he last spoke with his son a week before the murder and added that Dashawn went “off the grid” just days before returning to Queens.
“I used to tell the kids … you got to tell your mother about Dashawn. They said, ‘Yeah, but she’s not taking it serious.’ He was going off the grid and I guess she didn’t take it serious, you know?” Coggins’ 53-year-old father, who identified himself only as Mr. Phillip, said to the New York Daily News. “He just started talking crazy, talking and saying delusional stuff. Something triggered and he went off the grid.”
Neighbors recall the commotion that erupted after the shooting.
“I heard the yelling and the screaming,” Kim Smith, 58, told The New York Post after hearing Dashawn’s sister wailing. Smith also said Dashawn’s sister claimed Dashawn had declared, “I killed mommy!” after the shooting.
“Everybody was screaming. It was a big ruckus out here, so I don’t know what was going on,” neighbor Tommy Drexler said.
Neighbors told CBS News that the family normally “kept to themselves” and Natalie Coggins had only lived in the building for less than a year.
“She comes and goes, says hello, and that’s it,” Drexler said. “Her son wasn’t living here that long either, and he was always outside going in and out of the house.”
Dashawn reportedly lived in an apartment building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of…
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