Murdered Playwright Moved To Greenpoint Seeing Cop Killing

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN — The playwright brutally murdered in Greenpoint this weekend had moved to what he thought was a safer neighborhood after witnessing the murder of an NYPD officer when he lived in Cypress Hills.

George Carroll, 42, died around 9.30 p.m. Friday near his Monitor Street home, across from Monsignor McGolrick Park, police said.

He and his wife, Christina Romero Carroll, had been walking home together when a man sitting outside a school demanded, “What are you looking at?” his wife said. Her husband replied, “I’m looking.”

Christina Romero Carroll watched in horror as the two men chased down her husband, stabbed him to death, and fled, police and reports said.

“George was a playwright and actor who loved deeply and passionately,” wrote Christina Romero Carroll on the GoFundMe page she launched to raise money for her husband’s funeral.

“He was fiercely loyal, and stood up for what was right,” she wrote, and called his death, “a random act of violence.”

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It was not the first random act of violence the couple faced in New York City — the Carrolls heard the gunshots that killed NYPD Officer Peter Figoski in 2011. Carroll described the event on an Indiegogo site he launched to raise money for a play he wanted to write about the experience.

“First a rustling outside our window could be heard and a bit of shouting,” wrote Carroll, who had curled up with his wife to watch a late night movie on Dec. 12, 2011 in their home in Cypress Hills, which Carroll described as “the type of place New Yorkers, even the most hard nosed, would find intimidating.”

“Then she heard it, Christina heard the shots.”

The Carrolls were later interviewed by the Daily News and Mrs. Carroll told a reporter she knew the victim was a cop because she looked out her window and saw the “thick rubber soles" of his department-issued boots.

Figoski's killer was later apprehended and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The couple decided to write a play about the experience and dedicate it to the fallen officer, Mr. Carroll wrote.

“This one is for Pete, his family and those who have lost someone in the line of duty.”

After watching her husband die in front of her, Mrs. Carroll told the New York Post they recently left Cypress Hills for Greenpoint because they thought the new neighborhood would be safer.

“Right now," she told the Post, “I feel like maybe I should talk to George to figure out what I should do.”

The couple had produced several plays with Catholic content under the name, “The Entity.” Their portfolio includes “The Tragedy of Tupac Amaru Shakur or Who Shot Me?” and a play about Augustus Tolton, the first African-American Roman Catholic priest in the United States.

Carroll has raised more than $13,000 to fund the burial of her husband, whom she described a devout Catholic who attended mass every day.

“Please help with whatever you can,” she wrote. “BUT more importantly he'd want you to pray for his soul.”

Carroll wrote that she still cannot believe that her husband is gone.

“This doesn't feel real,” wrote Carroll. “Every time I hear a bike chime I turn around to see if it's him.”