A 28-year-old tenant in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx has been arrested twice, charged with menacing and criminal mischief, and accused of filling his apartment with gas by turning on four unlit stove burners, yet he remains in the building, and the residents who live alongside him say they have no idea when relief is coming.
Anthony Orozco has not paid rent since December 2024, his building management company told the New York Post. Metro Landmark Realty said it has been trying to evict him since June. The case remains stuck in housing court.
Meanwhile, neighbors in the East 214th Street building describe years of escalating conduct, hatchet attacks on doors, knives in hallways, public indecency in common areas, all captured on video, and all apparently insufficient to remove one man from a building full of families.
The situation reached a breaking point on April 4. A manager for Metro Landmark Realty told the Post that Orozco turned on all four stove burners inside his apartment without lighting them, filling the unit with gas. The FDNY responded. The management company said the building's gas supply was shut off afterward, and stayed off for a month.
Neighbor Alexandra Reina, 51, described the scene:
"He was sitting there smoking cigarettes under this gas. The whole area was gassed down. So what was he trying to do, blow up everybody in the building?"
An entire building lost gas service for weeks because of one tenant's conduct. Residents who cook with gas, who heat water with gas, who depend on that utility every day, they paid the price. Orozco, court records show, pleaded not guilty.
The arrests kept coming. On April 13, police said Orozco broke a camera on the front door of an apartment with a stick. He was arrested and charged with criminal mischief. On April 29, police said he swung a metal rail at a 44-year-old woman in front of her apartment. He was arrested again and charged with menacing.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, court records show.
Some residents told the Post the problems stretch back three years. Video reportedly shows Orozco banging on a door with a hatchet while wearing a black dress. Other footage shows him touching himself inappropriately in the hallway. Additional clips show him in only underwear in a common area. Footage first obtained by News 12 showed him walking through halls with a knife and knocking on doors.
Tenant Leonia Clemente, 44, told the Post that Orozco's behavior shifts depending on what wig he is wearing:
"The blonde wig, he messes with me. The pink wig, he messes with the guy on the second floor. The red wig, he messes with the third floor."
Clemente added:
"Depending on what wig he has on, it's who he messes with... He has different personalities. It's multiple personalities."
She called Orozco "the tenant from h***," saying he "drives us crazy, he harasses us. He does a lot. He does a lot of crazy things."
None of this is hearsay from a single disgruntled neighbor. Multiple tenants are on record. The management company corroborates the timeline. The NYPD confirmed the arrests. And still, the man remains in the building. New York City's housing court system, the same system that governs tenant protections across one of the most regulated rental markets in the country, has yet to resolve the case.
This is the kind of story that makes ordinary New Yorkers furious, and for good reason. The city's tenant-protection framework was built to shield vulnerable renters from predatory landlords. That is a legitimate purpose. But when the same framework makes it nearly impossible to remove a tenant who has been arrested multiple times, who allegedly endangered an entire building with a gas leak, and who has not paid rent in months, something has gone badly wrong.
Metro Landmark Realty has been pursuing eviction since June. The case is still pending. In the meantime, every other tenant in that building, people who pay rent, follow the rules, and just want to live safely, is stuck.
It is worth noting that New York City's leadership has repeatedly promised to address housing dysfunction, from voucher programs to homeless sweeps. The gap between those promises and the reality on East 214th Street is hard to miss.
Reina, the neighbor, did not ask for punishment. She asked for help, for Orozco and for the building.
"We are just asking for someone to come and get him out of here and get him some help and put him in the hospital."
She continued:
"Something had to be done. They have to help this man because he's going to hurt someone or someone is going to hurt him. Before it gets like that, take care of the situation and the problem we have there."
That plea, practical, humane, and desperate, captures what so many residents across New York feel when the system fails them. They are not asking for cruelty. They are asking for someone in authority to act before the next incident is worse than the last.
When a Post reporter approached Orozco, he threatened to call the cops. He told a Spanish television station reporter he would only do an interview for $5,000. Calls to two lawyers in his criminal cases were not returned.
So the residents wait. The gas was eventually restored after a month, but the man who caused the shutoff is still there. The criminal charges are pending. The housing court case grinds on. And the people who live in that building, who have watched this unfold for years, have no clear timeline for resolution.
The broader dysfunction is not limited to housing court. City Hall has struggled with basic governance deadlines, and the political leadership that oversees the courts, the police response, and the housing bureaucracy has shown little urgency about cases like this one.
New York's political class spends enormous energy on rent regulations, tenant rights expansions, and housing policy debates. Those debates matter. But they rarely account for the Leonia Clementes and Alexandra Reinas of the world, the tenants who follow every rule and still end up trapped next to someone the system cannot or will not remove.
The city's declining public confidence in municipal leadership is not abstract. It is built on stories exactly like this one: real people, real danger, and a bureaucracy that moves at its own pace regardless of what is happening on the ground.
When a man can allegedly swing a metal rail at a woman in front of her apartment, plead not guilty, and walk back into the same building where she lives, something in the system has broken. The question is whether anyone with authority cares enough to fix it before the next 911 call.
Tenant protections exist to prevent abuse. When they become a shield for the abuser, they have stopped serving the people they were designed to help.
