Three murder victims in New York whose bodies were left to rot for days in their Queens home were remembered Sunday as a “good” and “quiet” family who worked hard and took care of one another.
55-year-old Karlene Barnett and her 36-year-old son Dervon Brightly were found stabbed to death in their house in South Jamaica Friday, along with 22-year-old Varshanna Malcolm, who friends said was Barnett’s niece.
“They were a good family,” horrified former neighbor Shaun Buchanan said on Sunday.
“It was extremely shocking for us to hear they were murdered gruesomely like that, viciously,” Buchanan said. “That’s what’s driving us crazy. That these people died like that.”
Nate Richardson was also mourning the loss of the mom and son, saying he and Brightly, who everyone called Derv, were close friends for years.
“We went through everything together. It was him and two other friends, and we called ourselves the Four Horsemen. We did everything together,” Richardson said.
“He was there for everything, the baby showers, the births, first car. I went to school in Virginia and he came out there,” he said of Brightly.
Buchanan said Barnett, who worked in healthcare “was always at work. She was hardworking.” She was described as “stern, but caring,” by Richardson.
“If there was rules, you abided by the rules. But she always made sure his skinny self was fed,” he said of the murdered mother and her son.
Richardson’s wife Danielle said Brightly was fond of doing impressions and funny voices, adding that the couple had last spoken to him on Tuesday.
“He was professing his love for one of our childhood friends,” Danielle Richardson said. “He was asking us to put in a good word for him. He said, ‘Danielle, you know I’m a good person. She’ll know.’ ”
“All of us are trying to fathom how this animal took out three people,” she added.
Buchanan, the former neighbor, said he was surprised to hear Brightly still lived at home but that, “I can understand the reasoning behind it, because that’s the type of family they were — that close.”
No arrests had been announced in the brutal slayings as of Sunday.
NYPD investigators believe the trio’s bodies were decomposing in the home on 155th Street in South Jamaica for days.
Neighbors said they had noticed the stench and tried but failed to pinpoint the source.
“We smelled this bad smell, didn’t know where it was coming from… My husband called 311,” neighbor Mahmouda Zaman told The Post. “They came and inspected, said, ‘There is no violation. We don’t know where the smell is coming from. And they left.”
“I thought maybe it was my plants, so I washed all my plants but the smell was still coming. Then, two days later the street was blocked off by police.”
Zaman said she is “shocked” and “scared” after learning of the source of the smell.
“I feel so sorry for them. The lady once came to buy plants from me, two okra plants, but we didn’t see them much,” she said. “Nobody around here thought the bad smell could be coming from bodies. It’s so horrible.”
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