A man said that just days before his ex-wife was fatally shot in the head, he tried to warn his loved ones about his son’s bizarre behavior and remarks.
Now, 36-year-old Dashawn Coggins faces charges for allegedly shooting and killing his mother, 61-year-old Natalie Coggins, in her Queens home on March 29.
Coggins fled the scene after the shooting. Authorities found him in Brooklyn a few hours later where they recovered the murder weapon, as well. They charged him with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Coggins’ father said that he last spoke with his son a week before the murder and added that Dashawn went “off the grid” just days before returning to Queens.
“I used to tell the kids … you got to tell your mother about Dashawn. They said, ‘Yeah, but she’s not taking it serious.’ He was going off the grid and I guess she didn’t take it serious, you know?” Coggins’ 53-year-old father, who identified himself only as Mr. Phillip, said to the New York Daily News. “He just started talking crazy, talking and saying delusional stuff. Something triggered and he went off the grid.”
Neighbors recall the commotion that erupted after the shooting.
“I heard the yelling and the screaming,” Kim Smith, 58, told The New York Post after hearing Dashawn’s sister wailing. Smith also said Dashawn’s sister claimed Dashawn had declared, “I killed mommy!” after the shooting.
“Everybody was screaming. It was a big ruckus out here, so I don’t know what was going on,” neighbor Tommy Drexler said.
Neighbors told CBS News that the family normally “kept to themselves” and Natalie Coggins had only lived in the building for less than a year.
“She comes and goes, says hello, and that’s it,” Drexler said. “Her son wasn’t living here that long either, and he was always outside going in and out of the house.”
Dashawn reportedly lived in an apartment building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, but was charged in a March 22 incident for allegedly pulling a gun on a woman after claiming for months that he lived in her home in Queens just a block from where his father lived.
Latasha Straughter said the day that she, her husband, and their five children moved into their rented house in August, Coggins confronted them.
“The day we moved in here he was walking up and down the driveway saying, ‘This is my house,’” Straughter told the Daily News. “‘Why are you moving in here?’ He said he owned the property. It was really crazy.”
The landlord recognized Coggins as a former tenant and he was reportedly still receiving mail at the address.
Coggins continued feuding with the family for seven months, then showed up at the home again in March and pulled a gun on Straughter.
“He said, ‘I’m going to kill you all, I’m going to shoot this s–t up,” Straughter recalled. “I called the cops immediately but by then, he was gone.”
Coggins was incarcerated for nearly three years for a 2017 weapon possession conviction. He was granted parole and released in October 2020.
Coggins’ father said that his son never got violent with him, but would display threatening behavior around his mother.
“He never got like that with me. Only when he was around his mother, he’d be violent and yelling and cursing and stuff like that,” Mr. Phillip said. “She was a good person. That’s all. It’s a tough time right now,” he added about his ex-wife.
Natalie Coggins was active in her community where she held a leadership role in the Queens County Section of the National Council of Negro Women.
“This past weekend, NCNW, Inc. Queens County Section lost one of our phenomenal sisters, Natalie Coggins,” the group wrote in an April 1 Facebook post. “She was a Life Member and played a major role in the Queens County Section as chair of the Community Service and Thanksgiving Basket Committee.”
