Posted on 07/23/2003 10:45:00 PM PDT by jordan8
If there is one thing that everyone in Brooklyn who knew Othniel Boaz Askew could agree on, it is that he had big plans. At 31, he had tried his hand at the real estate business, rebuilding a row house in Fort Greene, and had served in the military, friends said. But he was always looking for the next big thing.
"He had grandiose ideas about becoming popular in politics," said Larry Caparaso, who lives in an elegant white row house a few doors down from the house on South Elliott Place where Mr. Askew lived.
"He was tremendously intelligent, and a real talker," Mr. Caparaso said. "He was very bright."
Mr. Askew was fatally shot yesterday afternoon after he gunned down James E. Davis, a first-term councilman from Fort Greene, at City Hall. It was a bloody end to a strange confrontation between the two men who were, by various accounts, either political rivals or a mentor and his protégé, perhaps both.
In June, Mr. Davis told a reporter that he had never heard of Mr. Askew. Yesterday, Mr. Askew rode to City Hall with Mr. Davis, was ushered through security screening with the councilman and received a round of introductions to other politicians on the Council floor. Minutes later, both men were critically wounded.
Just who Mr. Askew was and where he came from is something of a mystery to his neighbors. He showed up on the genteel block of stately brownstones last August, neighbors said, in a truck with North Carolina license plates and with plans to transform the facade of a crumbled cedar shingle row house.
In his new neighborhood, he saw other kinds of projects.
"He was interested in politics, in education," said Mark Taylor, who met Mr. Askew at the video store Mr. Taylor owns that is a block from Mr. Askew's house.
Though not well known in the neighborhood, Mr. Askew filed papers with the city's Campaign Finance Board this year to run in the Council race against Mr. Davis. Mr. Askew set up a campaign office in his home.
But his political career got off to a slow start. Despite his dogged work around the neighborhood, where he patrolled, clipboard in hand, for signatures to get on the ballot, staff members in Mr. Davis's office said Mr. Askew had failed to secure the required number of signatures. What happened next is unclear. According to members of Mr. Davis's staff, Mr. Askew approached the councilman about three weeks ago, seeking a job.
"The councilman began to think of himself as something of a mentor to him," said Amyre Loomis, who was Mr. Davis's spokeswoman. Ms. Loomis said Mr. Askew had asked Mr. Davis to write a letter for him saying that Mr. Askew had a promising future in public service.
But according to a law enforcement official, Mr. Askew gave a very different version of events when he called in a complaint to the F.B.I. against Mr. Davis yesterday, claiming that Mr. Davis had threatened him. The law enforcement official said Mr. Askew said that Mr. Davis had come to his home earlier this month and promised him a job in exchange for withdrawing from the race. Mr. Askew said in the complaint that he had refused, according to the official, and that Mr. Davis returned a few days later.
According to the complaint, Mr. Askew and Mr. Davis walked through nearby Fort Greene Park and the councilman told him that he had done a background check on Mr. Askew that he claimed revealed that he was gay and that the information might be exposed in the race. Mr. Askew considered this a threat, the law enforcement official said.
A woman who worked on Mr. Askew's campaign said last night that he had told her that Mr. Davis had threatened his life on several occasions and the lives of his family members in demanding that he pull out of the race. The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Askew told her on Tuesday that he had handed over to Mr. Davis the petitions containing the signatures required to get on the ballot. She estimated that Mr. Askew had collected 2,700, she said; only 900 were required.
Staff members in Mr. Davis's office said that Mr. Askew had been calling the councilman more often in the past few weeks, showing up at the councilman's office yesterday at midday. They said Mr. Askew asked if he could attend the Council meeting with Mr. Davis, who, they said, happily obliged.
Abraham E. Wasserman, a Conservative Party candidate seeking Mr. Davis's seat, said he met Mr. Askew earlier this year at a political function.
"When I met him, my impression was very positive," Mr. Wasserman said in a phone interview yesterday evening. "He was very astute and professional and presentable. He looked like a person that, in my opinion, had bearing, had status."
As the details about Askew's life of fraud comes out, a question arises: Who would Bill Clinton have blamed, and shot, if the voters of Arkansas had kicked him out of office and never let him back in?
Congressman Billybob
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