Ex-con arrested for murder of estranged girlfriend shot six times in her Brooklyn building lobby

A three-time ex-con shot his estranged girlfriend to death in the lobby of her Brooklyn apartment building —and later told cops he killed her because she threatened to have him thrown in jail for violating her order of protection against him, police said Wednesday.

Israel Elves was arrested Tuesday and charged with the early Monday murder of Hope Staton Pearson, 42, in the lobby of his East Flatbush apartment building on Rockaway Parkway near Winthrop St.

Elves, 56, was living down the street from the victim. He confessed to killing her after she threatened to “put [him] in jail,” according to the criminal complaint against him.

Police said Elves, who was paroled in March after serving nearly five years for robbery, had been the subject of a number of domestic violence complaints filed by Pearson, including one shortly after he was released from prison in which she said he choked her.

Just weeks before her death, on July 25, Pearson accused Elves of pulling a knife on her in his apartment, which they were sharing at the time.

She told police they got into an argument because she wouldn’t share her drugs,. When he came at her with a knife, another roommate intervened, telling her she should call the cops, according to a criminal complaint.

When she returned a few hours, later all her clothes were “spread out” in the lobby, Assistant District Attorney David Ingle said at Elves’ arraignment Wednesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

Police picked him up on July 30, charging him with menacing, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon, all misdemeanors. He was released without bail in that case.

“I met her on the street,” Elves told police, according to prosecutors. “I knew she was trouble. I should have listened to my daughter. I dated her only about a month.”

He allegedly shot Pearson six times in the lobby of her building on Monday. The shooting was caught on video, according to the criminal complaint.

Judge Simiyon Haniff ordered Elves held without bail Wednesday. Because the killing was meant to silence the victim’s testimony against him, Elves is charged with first-degree murder and faces the prospect of life in prison.

Pearson’s aunt Sharron Staton, 82, told the Daily News that her troubled niece was a decent person at heart and not someone who would inspire such a violent end.

“She wasn’t mean, she wasn’t vicious — she was a struggling woman trying to make a life,” the aunt said. “It boggles the mind.”

Records show Elves also served several years in prison for weapons possession, with a conditional release in 1995, and four years for another robbery conviction, with a conditional release in 1989.

Police also said Elves was busted for a Harlem murder in 1996, but the disposition of that case was not immediately clear.