A lovers’ quarrel boiled over into bloodshed when a petite 26-year-old woman shot and killed her jealous boyfriend during a fierce fight on a Brooklyn street, police said.
Crystal Hardie was arrested Thursday around 5 p.m. at the spot where her allegedly abusive boyfriend Raheem Burtt, 22, lay sprawled on the pavement in front of 1284 St. John’s Place in Crown Heights.
He was shot once in the chest. Police said the weapon belonged to Burtt. He was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where he died from his wound a half-hour later.
Criminal charges against Hardie were pending. She was released from police custody several hours after the shooting.
“A grand jury will determine if it was a matter of self-defense or manslaughter,” a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said.
Hardie told cops her beefy boyfriend flew into a jealous rage and started smacking her after a male friend tapped her on the shoulder to say “hello.”
Witnesses told cops the boyfriend appeared to be wrestling with her more than hitting her, but that she was far smaller and no match for him.
One witness, Tyrone Williams, 46, said Burtt was furious and lunged for his gun, which Hardie kept in her purse.
“He grabbed her bag. I think he slapped her first. I heard a big pop. He [Burtt] said ‘I’m shot.’ He tried to walk across the street to hail a cab but they wouldn’t stop for him,” said Williams.
“She finally got a cab. She said, ‘come on, come on,’ but he was laying on the ground.” The cab took off without them.
“I don’t think he really believed it was happening,” Williams said.
“She was there for a minute or two, then she tried to walk away when police came. A couple of people were telling her to walk away.”
Neighbors said Burtt had beaten his 5-foot-tall girlfriend in the past.
A domestic-violence case from earlier in the year is sealed, a law-enforcement source said. The source added there were no records of an order of protection against either Burtt or Hardie. The source said that during a previous altercation, Hardie had tossed Burtt’s clothes out of the apartment they shared on Eastern Parkway.