Aspiring NYC nurse found beaten to death inside Brooklyn apartment; boyfriend in police custody
An aspiring nurse found dead on the floor of her Brooklyn apartment was the victim of a vicious beating — and cops are questioning her live-in boyfriend to determine his role in her death.
Cops dispatched to victim Kelly Kwak’s first-floor apartment on Gates Ave. near Classon Ave. in Clinton Hill at 9:40 a.m. Friday found the woman dead on the living room floor with bruises about her body, police said.
“I can’t believe … it’s not real,” Kwak’s heartbroken mother, Shin Young, told the Daily News Tuesday. “I’m trying to be normal. But time to time I think of her. It’s very terrible. She was only 28.”
Responding officers banged on the door of the apartment, where her extremely lethargic 32-year-old boyfriend took his time opening the door. He told cops he had taken a lot of pills, sources said.
Kwak, a Queens native attending Queensborough Community College, was discovered on the floor in a massive pool of blood. She suffered multiple blunt-force injuries, and her face was shattered.
She died at the scene, and EMS took her boyfriend, who may be mentally ill, to Woodhull Hospital for treatment, officials said.
Cops were asked to visit the apartment after Kwak’s concerned out-of-state brother called police in fear of her safety, police sources said.
Young, 61, said she last texted with her daughter about 9 p.m. on March 5 — five days before she was found dead.
“We text each other. I ask her to do something and she said, ‘Yes, yes, I’m going to come and do it.’
“She was a family girl,” her tortured mother said about her only daughter, who had aspirations of becoming a nurse. “She loved Mommy and Daddy and her brother. Her dog, Scooby, she rescued. She said she had to save the doggie from the shelter.”
Due to the decomposition of her body, police believe she had been dead at least a day, police sources said.
“She was sweet girl. Going to school,” Young said. The mom didn’t know what had happened to her daughter until detectives informed her of her death.
Young said her daughter and her boyfriend were “on and off.” Details of her daughter’s death remain a mystery, she said.
“She wanted to continue school for nursing,” Young said about her daughter. “She had a plan. Of course she didn’t finish.”
Kwak’s cousin — reached by phone in Georgia — recalled visiting the “kind” woman in New York several times a year.
“She put her family before herself,” said Peter Ko. “She was the first to call if we had a problem or something going on.”
As their grandmother aged, Kwak took it upon herself to take care of her.
“Kelly always took her out to lunches, dinners, made sure to spend quality time with her,” said Ko, 33. “She’s always happy, outgoing.”
Kwak recently adopted a dog named Scooby and had loose plans to move down South.
“It’ll be nonstop Scooby before school, after school,” Ko said. “She loved that dog. Other than that, just school.”
An autopsy by the city’s medical examiner on Monday revealed that Kwak died of blunt-force trauma about the body. Her death was declared a homicide.
“I have no idea what happened,” Ko said. “That’s what hurts me the most.”
Kwak’s boyfriend had not yet been charged in her death as hospital staff evaluated his mental status, police sources said.
