BROOKLYN — Detectives botched the death investigation of a Brownsville woman — never even going to her apartment and leaving the probe to patrolmen — which was later determined by the Medical Examiner's office to be a homicide, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Wednesday.
“I think there were several missteps that were identified by patrol, by my detectives who were notified, who couldn’t get to the scene,” Boyce said. “They should have went.”
Myrtle McKenny, 82, was found unresponsive in the kitchen of her apartment in the Woodson Houses on Powell Street by a home health aide Nov. 9. It wasn’t until Monday, though, that her death was ruled a homicide after a funeral home director spotted a stab wound in the back of her neck, police said.
Boyce said the detectives could be disciplined internally.
“I think had they gone that we would have probably been in a different place right now,” he said.
McKenny suffered from hypertension and diabetes, so EMS initially determined the cause of death was natural.
A family doctor was also notified, but Boyce said he did not examine her after the death.
McKenny’s body instead sat in the Brooklyn morgue for a month. No suspects have been identified.
“It’s just a horrible circumstance,” Boyce said.
