From The Daily News, Thugs slay Brooklyn social worker Douglas Smith in fight over exercise equipment:
A Brooklyn social worker described as “the picture of health” was slain at his neighborhood gym in a feud over exercise equipment.
Douglas Smith, 50, was knifed and clobbered with a hammer by a pair of muscleheads who attacked him as he worked out at his East Flatbush health club.
Smith died Sunday morning at Kings County Hospital, a day after he was jumped inside the Church Avenue Fitness Club, cops said yesterday.”He was a gentle giant,” Smith’s heartbroken father, Castello Smith, 77, said last night.
The father said he learned of his son’s death from police yesterday afternoon. “I wish I could have been with him [at the hospital]. At least he would have been able to hear my voice. I would have said, ‘Dougie, this is your daddy,’” the elder Smith said.
An argument between Smith, a bodybuilding buff standing more than 6 feet tall, and a younger, scrawnier club member preceded the fatal attack, witnesses said.
Clubgoers said the dispute was over who claimed first dibs on a Nautilus elliptical machine. The club member quarreling with Smith summoned two pals to the gym for backup, witnesses said.
“They came from outside and attacked him with a hammer and a knife,” Pat St. Charles, 37, a trainer at the club, told the Daily News.
Witnesses said Smith was exercising on the elliptical machine when the duo ambushed him from behind, stabbing him three times in the back and walloping him in the head with a hammer.
The following suggests, alas, that long-standing NYPD habits in handling crime scenes haven’t changed:
The only signs remaining of the attack yesterday were Smith’s workout gloves and Gatorade bottle – left on the machine he had been using.
We’ll try to get NYPD and Kings County District Attorney comment for an update.
Thanks to Tom Reilly of the Reilly International Group for the tip.
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I’m so happy that my gym is safe!