Nightmare neighbor: Suspect in cop's death no angel

ANDRE BUTLER is an angry, troubled 16-year-old with sticky fingers, a short fuse and quick fists.

So his neighbors on Markoe Street in the Mill Creek section of Mantua aren't surprised that Butler stands accused of barreling a stolen Cadillac Escalade into a police cruiser, killing Officer Isabel Nazario, a single mom, and injuring her partner, Terry Tull, a 12-year veteran.

"Andre is a nuisance. He's a beast. He's a menace to the neighborhood," said neighbor Barbara George, who has lived near the family for more than four years in the tidy townhouses of Lucien E. Blackwell Homes.

"He liked to start fights," said Aretha Bickerstaff, 37, a neighbor and mother of four. " He was a bully. He was always with the crowd up to no good,"

Butler's troubles date to October 2004, when he was charged with pulling a fire alarm as a 12-year-old student at Thomas Fitzsimons School, sources said.

In 2005, he was sent to a juvenile-detention facility in the Poconos for robbery and had several run-ins with other teens there, police said.

"He had discipline problems there so they sent him back to Philadelphia," said police spokeswoman Officer Jill Russell.

Due to his incorrigible behavior, he was ordered to court where a judge was expected to place him in another facility. On June 27, Butler showed up at Family Court with his mom, but he fled before facing a judge. A bench warrant was issued, police said.

Butler's mom told cops that she had no idea of his whereabouts - until he allegedly floored the stolen Cadillac into a police cruiser with such force that it turned the police car into shards of twisted metal. Jaws of Life were used to help free the cops from the wreckage.

But neighbors said yesterday that this summer they regularly saw Butler hanging out on his porch, around the neighborhood and apparently casing cars to steal.

"He was clearly living there the whole time," George said. "If I knew he was wanted, I would have called the cops myself.

Said Bickerstaff: "He'd sit on the porch with friends and when the cops rolled by, he'd hide in the house till they left.

"He'd tell his family and friends to say he wasn't there."

At Butler's house yesterday afternoon, no one came to the door, but a woman yelled from a second-floor window, asking who was there. When a reporter indentified herself and asked for comment, there was no response.

Bickerstaff said that a couple of months ago, she saw Butler run behind the townhouses with a black motorcycle that appeared to her to have been stolen. He spray-painted it blue, she said.

George, 49, a single mom of three who drives a school bus and tractor-trailer, said that just last week she saw Butler and his friends eyeing her Kia Optima with leather seats. She said they were peering in the windows, and she speculated that they were trying to see if the car had an alarm.

They left when she threatened to call 9-1-1. Fingerprints blanketed her black car, she said.

She said she also saw Butler haul suspicious items into his house, including tires.

The moms of Markoe Street hold Butler's mom responsible.

"She had no control over the kids," George said.

"She should be held responsible. If you make kids, you have to be responsible for them. . . . I call her the 'neighbor from hell.' "

She said Butler's mom moved to the townhouse four years ago from a shelter with seven kids. "More were added," George said.

Neighbors said they saw at least 10 or 11 kids or young adults there most of the time.

"Andre's an aggressive person," said Brian Wallace, Bickerstaff's 14-year-old son, who played basketball with Butler at the Mill Creek playground. "He'd get an attitude if he was fouled. He'd get really mad."

He tried to bust other boys' lips, he said.

Butler picked fights on the streets, Wallace said. "I saw him fighting someone who had nothing to do with it. He just went up and started punching."

Now Butler has entered the adult criminal-justice system. He is charged with third-degree murder, aggravated assault and related crimes in connection with Nazario's death and Tull's injuries.

"Maybe he didn't know what he was doing," Wallace said, sitting in his living room a few houses down from where Butler lived.

"No," his mom said. "If you're almost 17, you know what you're doing."

"He was a ticking time bomb," George said. "He needs to be put away. Do the crime, do the time. If I was related to the police officer, I'd want him put away forever. He's a child. But he has to be held responsible. He has to be." *

Staff writer Dafney Tales contributed to this report.