Cops nab ruffian linked to robbery of 99-year-old NYC landlord who had stroke and died: sources

Authorities busted a fugitive thief accused of robbing a 99-year-old Manhattan landlord who had a stroke and died in the aftermath of the $20,000 heist, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.

The 39-year-old suspect – who investigators believe robbed longtime Washington Heights building owner Jose Antonio Tur of rent payments on Sept. 22 – was taken into custody in Philadelphia a week later on Sept. 29, according to the sources.

But he was still awaiting extradition to the Big Apple on Tuesday. 

It was not immediately known why the alleged robber – whose name was not released – was in Philadelphia.

The cunning, ski mask-wearing criminal called the elderly building owner around 10 a.m. and claimed he had a package that needed to be delivered to an apartment within the residence on West 187th Street near Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny previously said. 

The caller requested that the senior meet him on the side of the building – a red flag because someone would only know there was a side entrance if he or she was familiar with that building, Kenny said.

When the victim went to open the gate, the intruder grabbed it and pushed his way past, the chief said. 

“The 99-year-old starts to fight with the perpetrator,” Kenny said. “During this fight over the door, his hand gets crushed between the door and the metal frame, hurts his hand, and he ends up having to get stitches.”

The suspect then made his way into the basement of the five-floor, 30-unit building, where he allegedly pressed a gun into the victim’s back and demanded access to the office, the police official said.

He then forced his way into the office, where he snatched up at least $20,000 in rent that was stored in a cabinet, he added.

The money also included payments from the tenants of two buildings across the street, which the senior also owned, Kenny said. 

“He is in charge of collecting the rent, and someone knew that he kept the rent in that cabinet,” the chief said. “It was plain obvious that the perpetrator knew his way around that building. He knew that the male had the money.”

The nonagenarian – who fled Cuba decades ago under Fidel Castro’s communist regime – was taken to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center with two broken fingers and a cut on his hand, police said. 

Tur then suffered a stroke “that caused him to be paralyzed on the left side and limited his ability to swallow and eat also,” his grandson Jose Miguel Tur, 31, told The Post by phone last week. 

He was then moved to the intensive care unit, and ultimately hospice care, where he died Wednesday, his grandson said. 

“From the beginning, it’s like anger and disgust and like how lawless New York has become, and how justice isn’t served, like there’s no consequences on the people who commit these kinds of crimes, and how there’s no respect, right?” Jose Tur said. “There’s no limit as to what you see, especially with this that hit hard at home.”

“The whole bail reform laws, clearly, the policy isn’t working,” he fumed.

The elder Tur, a former ship merchant from Cuba, worked as a porter for eight years before buying the Washington Heights building in 1979, his grandson said.

The senior had been the target of a previous assault at another building he owns across the street shortly after bail reforms went into effect in 2020.

During that assault, a perp with a “long rap sheet” had attempted to burglarize the building, the younger man recalled.

“[My grandfather] wanted to see a change,” he said. “He was very saddened at the fact that, you know, when he bought these buildings, the city was in shambles. Then it got much, much better later, and then he just saw another decline.”

“So [he] was like, imagine, ‘Oh, my God, I’m at the end of my road, and it’s kind of like how it was when I first got here, which is not good,’” Miguel Tur added.