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Body parts IDed BY JEROME BURDI AND ROCCO PARASCANDOLA February 18, 2005
An aspiring designer whose hacked off limbs were found in a Brooklyn subway station was last seen leaving home Monday to file his taxes and look for work, his mother said Friday.
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Friends, however, say Rashawn Brazell, 19, was supposed to meet a man for a tryst.
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That man, a police source said Friday, could hold the key to solving the slaying of a young man known to friends for his outgoing personality. The identity of the mystery man was still not clear late Friday, the source said, but detectives do have his nickname and are trying to find him.
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"Come forth now," Brazell's mother, Desire, 42, implored the man. "Why would you take someone like that, that was so loved, that's going to be so missed. "He was my best friend," she said. The case unfolded just after 3 a.m. Thursday when a transit worker inspecting the A line subway tracks at the Nostrand Avenue station found a blue trash bag containing two legs and arms.
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Rashawn Brazell (Handout Photo)
Feb 18, 2005
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Police closed the station and searched the platform, tunnel and various equipment rooms for signs of the rest of the body. An autopsy on the body parts was inconclusive, but Brazell was identified through a fingerprint match from the time he was arrested for marijuana possession. Brazell's mother said she said goodbye to her son Monday morning as she left for work and he headed out. It was not immediately known whether his mother knew about his supposed meeting later. Either way, she said she did not think much about his not returning home that night because he sometimes stayed overnight with friends. By late Wednesday, however, she reported him missing. Police say they believe he had already been killed by then. At Rashawn Brazell's building Friday, neighbors and friends created a
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makeshift memorial. "Words can't describe that," Allan Dandrade, 19, said of the gruesome way Brazell was killed. "No one should have that kind of death, but for him, as close as he was to everybody, that shouldn't have happened." Brazell, family and friends said, had a penchant for fashion. He often tried out new jeans designs, his mother said, using bleach and different cuts.
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His personality, she and others said, was generally upbeat and outgoing, cooking for friends and helping others, sometimes letting friends stay in the family's apartment.
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"Sometimes when you're too helpful," his mother said, suggesting he may have been taken advantage of while lending someone a hand. "I don't know where it paid off for him, to end up the way he ended up."
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Rocco Parascandola is a staff writer. Jerome Burdi is a freelance writer. Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
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