A Brooklyn mom was stuck holding the mop when the city dragged its feet in cleaning up the bloody aftermath of a vicious slashing in her building this month.
Shaquana Applewhite woke up to a scene out of “The Shining” the morning of Aug. 17 with blood covering four floors, the stairwells, and the lobby of the NYCHA’s Bushwick Houses.
A 34-year-old man was slashed on the 14th floor around 1 a.m. and ran through the building at 24 Humboldt St. looking for help, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
The mess was still there on Friday afternoon when Applewhite came from work.
“I said, ‘I can’t leave this here like this.’ So I took the bleach out, took the mop, and I cleaned my floor,” Applewhite, 32, told The Post.
“I just did my best to do what I had to do for my kids,” said the mom of an 8-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy.
Applewhite bought cleaning supplies for the task, which took two hours because the blood had to soak in order to be removed. She had to toss the clothes and shoes she wore after.
“This s–t is sad … this is just inhumane,” she said in a video posted to TikTok.
That same day a building caretaker also started to clean the gore, said Dwane Simmons, a NYCHA caretaker supervisor, but was told to stop and wait for a professional team.
Simmons said Alpha Medical Waste Removal was notified but had to wait for the police to finish investigating.
“I’m not sure they work on the weekend, so they didn’t come, then Monday morning came and I re-called them trying to find out what was going on,” said Simmons.
The clean-up crew finally showed up four days later.
