Months before Dora Howell was found shot in the chest and buried in a Staten Island home in April, she was a plaintiff before the state’s highest court, where she was suing the city for failing to protect her from domestic violence.
The police are investigating the circumstances behind the death of Howell, 43, and have not named any suspects, but her violent end and accounts of her abuse paint a portrait of a woman who was repeatedly failed by the city’s criminal justice system.
Howell’s lawsuit, first filed in 2011, describes in painstaking detail the abuse she suffered at the hands of an ex-boyfriend in 2008. She alleged that police officers responding to the scene violated the Domestic Violence Intervention Act by not arresting the man, against whom Howell had eight orders of protection, according to court records.
The ex-boyfriend, Andre Gaskin, has not been named as a suspect in Howell’s murder and there is nothing to connect him to the crime, according to the little information the NYPD has provided about its investigation. Gaskin was eventually charged with assault and criminal contempt for violating the orders of protection.
But the case depicts a woman who continued to suffer from the ripple effects of domestic violence and was let down by the people sworn to protect her. It made its way through the legal system and eventually reached the state’s Court of Appeals in October 2022.
Months later, Howell was dead, identified in part by the scars she still bore from her abuse, according to her lawyer.
Police responding to a tip discovered her remains on April 3, under the basement of a house on York Avenue on Staten Island.
SI Live reported that Howell’s body had been buried in a crawl space below the home’s basement and was sniffed out by NYPD K-9 dogs, according to police sources. It is still unclear exactly when she died.
Howell’s lawsuit claims that Gaskin began abusing her back in 2008, when she was pregnant with their child and living a floor…
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