The brother of Manhattan murder victim Rashaun Howze has worked with the mentally ill — so he has a unique understanding of how the system failed his mentally ill sibling, despite his best, desperate efforts to help before his brother was stabbed on the street.
Howze, who had been out of prison since 2018 after being convicted of murdering a Queens teenager in 1995, was rebuilding his life and making progress on anti-psychotic medications, said his brother Shane Howze.
When Rashaun Howze’s parole supervision ended, his incentive to stay on his meds vanished, his brother said.
Shane Howze is convinced good treatment would have helped.
“I think that there’s a person behind the mental illness. Often we only see the news where this mentally ill person committed a crime — they pushed somebody in front of the train.
“But if we provide the proper treatment channels for individuals who suffer from schizophrenia it is proven that the treatment works,” said Shane, a licensed therapist who once worked at a psychiatric hospital.
Rashaun Howze, 45, was stabbed to death early last Thursday at the six-way intersection of Riverside Drive, Riverside Drive East and W. 158th St. in Washington Heights, police said.
Cops arrested Ezequiel Mendoza, 34, in the murder after using video footage to track him down at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, where he had sought treatment for cuts to his hand.
As a youth, Rashaun played the role of protector in his family, looking after his mother and brother. That family dynamic changed when Rashaun developed schizophrenia as a teen, Shane told the Daily News.
“I was probably about 10. He was about 16. I was a kid, so I just knew that something wasn’t right,” Shane said.
“My mom would always try to get him help and they would give her the runaround all the time,” he recounted.
“She took him to Family Court. They had told her there was nothing they could do. They had to wait until he did something. She was trying to prevent something from happening. They didn’t provide much assistance.”
Rashaun became isolated, and said men in black suits were following him, his brother recounted.
Then he committed murder.
Rashaun fired three bullets into Quentin Gamble, 17, during a Nov. 28, 1995, robbery as the teen walked back to Thomas Edison High School for class. An accomplice also smashed Quentin in the head with a 40-ounce beer bottle.
Surgeons could not save Quentin’s life. His brother told The News last week that he was shocked by Rashaun’s death, and that the slaying left him with “mixed emotions.”
Rashaun was sentenced to 20 years to life, and was released to parole in 2018.
“When he went away, I was about 13, 14. It was really rough,” Shane said.
“He was gone so long it felt like we would never be reunited again. The day he came home, it was just me, Mom and my brother again. Everything felt back to normal again,” Shane said. “We celebrated. I took him to different restaurants and movies. We tried to catch up on things. He did really well.”
Rashaun was mandated to take Zyprexa as part of his parole, and the meds were very effective.
Records show Rashaun was released from parole in January 2021. His brother believes a factor was Rashaun’s progress, and his family’s involvement in his life.
Then Rashaun started missing drug doses, and went off his medications.
“I would say probably the turning point was May of 2022,” Shane said. He described Rashaun as “just really paranoid. ... He would just accuse Mom and I of not caring about him ... that we were working with other people against him.”
His brother thinks he was discharged from parole supervision prematurely, possibly because of staffing issues — the state could have made him get inpatient treatment or sent him back to prison. Instead, the system left his family with an impression of indifference, he said.
Shane says he tried to get his brother help by filling out a mental health warrant request. Such warrants are a way friends and relatives of mentally ill people can ask a judge to order them into mental health treatment.
A state Supreme Court justice held a hearing, and ordered Rashaun taken to Bellevue Hospital, his brother recounted.
But Rashaun’s Bellevue stay lasted just a few hours.
“Anybody can pretend for a few minutes that they’re OK. So I’m not quite sure how he was released so quickly,” Shane said. “While he’s talking to me, he may be fine. But while he’s sitting on the couch alone, he may be responding to internal stimuli, talking to himself, looking around because he’s paranoid.”
After that, Rashaun stopped taking his meds entirely — “no real quality of life, no interaction with anybody. He would call Mom and I here and there, ranting and raving, totally not like himself.”
Shane said he didn’t know much about what led to his brother’s murder. Police said Rashaun and Mendoza — also an ex-con, who served time for robbery — knew each other, but an NYPD spokesman didn’t elaborate on a motive.
“It’s really weird, because Rashaun was such a loner,” Shane said. He added that he never knew his brother to interact with anyone in the neighborhood where he was stabbed.
Mendoza remained held without bail Tuesday.
Shane — who chose a career as a counselor and therapist because of his brother’s struggles — maintained Rashaun fell through the gaps in the mental health system.
“My family reached out for help, they should be provided with help. I called so many different city and state agencies,” he said. “And I got the total runaround — and this is someone who worked in the N.Y. mental health system.”
“He had a genuine, genuine heart,” Shane said of his brother. “He would call to check on our grandmothers on a daily basis. He was a good kid.
“Everybody is entitled to a mistake. He served his time for his. He wasn’t a knucklehead that was getting in trouble. That wasn’t him.”
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