The estranged husband of a beloved NYCHA employee in East Harlem has been charged with her brutal stabbing murder.
Dwayne Street, 46, was charged with murder, assault and stalking in the January 5 murder of his wife, 45-year-old Lisa Epton, police said on Sunday.
Police arrested Street at his home in the Wagner Houses on E. 124th St. Saturday, police said, two months after he was identified as a person of interest.
Police initially circulated a wanted poster for Street stating that he was “wanted for questioning only”, but was to be “considered armed and dangerous” and “approached with caution”.
Unable to call her home, Epton’s friends and family found her lifeless body — face down in the kitchen, stabbed in the torso — in her late mother’s E. 102nd St. apartment near First Ave.
“We tried to reach her all day, but she wouldn’t answer, even for her children,” Taeya Clark, a close friend of Epton, told the Daily News. “We called her daughter and we just went there. [Her daughter] found her on the floor.
Epton still had the keys to her late mother’s apartment, which she sometimes used for family gatherings after her mother’s death in October, relatives said.
Street and Epton were together for about 10 years but were currently estranged, family members told the news. Street lived with his mother in East Harlem.
On Oct. 18, Street was arrested for criminal misconduct for vandalizing two TVs during a fight at Epton’s apartment a year earlier, police said on Wednesday.
And a friend broke the news that Street was stalking Epton. “He went to work a week early and strangled her,” Ana Mayor said at a vigil for the victim in January.
Epton had three grown children and worked for the New York City Housing Authority, friends said.
In a Feb. 19 post on Facebook, her daughter, Destiny Ortega, wished her a happy birthday, saying, “It’s so hard not to have you here! I love you very much and miss you very much. Please visit me again in my dreams so that I can feel your presence.
A neighbor who spoke to the news after Epton’s murder described her as a devoted mother who decorated the common areas on the floor of her apartment building for every major holiday.
“She thought it was important for the children,” the woman said. “Her mind was contagious. She lived for the children.”
Street is being held at Rikers Island and is expected to face charges Monday on an indictment in the Manhattan Supreme Court, officials said.
One of Epton’s close friends celebrated his arrest in a post on Facebook on Sunday.
‘Now I hope you can rest in peace! I will always miss and love you!” she wrote. “Tears just keep thinking about all the times we’ve had together all the conversations we’d have!”
