A former building superintendent in Brooklyn was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for the 2017 murder of the man hired to replace him.
Keith Floyd, 44, was convicted in February 2023 of fatally strangling Daniel Rivera, who had been hired to replace Floyd, and attempted to cover up the crime by burying Rivera’s body in an unmarked grave outside Floyd’s grandmother’s house, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said in a press release.
Describing the murder as “senseless” and “cold-blooded,” District Attorney Gonzalez said that the lengthy prison sentence would make the community safer and ensure that Floyd pays a heavy price for his callous and horrific crime.
Floyd was convicted of second-degree murder, first-degree hindering prosecution, and concealment of a human corpse following a jury trial.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Ziomaida Tomlinson handed down the sentence.
According to the evidence presented during the trial, on Sep. 27, 2017, Floyd strangled Rivera near 146 Grove Street in Bushwick. At the time, Rivera, 41, was working as a superintendent for a building management company, having been hired to replace Floyd after he was fired in April 2017 following an arrest for gun possession.
Floyd was also facing eviction from his apartment at 91 Himrod Street in September 2017, and Rivera would have taken over the company-owned apartment once Floyd vacated it.
The prosecution presented evidence that in the days leading up to his eviction, Floyd began communicating with Rivera via phone calls and text messages. On the day of the murder, Floyd exchanged text messages with the victim for seven hours. Detailed timelines of their interactions were established through video and surveillance footage.
Floyd left his apartment at 91 Himrod Street around 3 p.m. and walked about five blocks to 146 Grove Street, one of the properties where Rivera worked. Roughly 40 minutes later, Floyd killed Rivera at that location. Later that evening, Floyd and his sister, Adrianna Floyd, 41, returned to the Grove Street property, wrapped the victim’s body in trash bags, loaded it into a shopping cart, and transported it to Floyd’s apartment.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 30, 2017, Floyd used the victim’s cellphone to send a text to Rivera’s boss, falsely stating that Rivera was quitting due to finding a new job. Later that morning, surveillance video captured Floyd pushing the shopping cart with the victim’s body out of his apartment and down the block to his grandmother’s home at 54 Himrod Street, where he buried the body.
The case took a significant turn when, on October 5, 2017, the New York City Police Department received an anonymous tip about a buried body at 54 Himrod Street. The following day, detectives discovered Rivera’s body in a shallow grave. The victim was wrapped in plastic trash bags, with clear plastic garbage tightly wound around his head and neck. The New York City Medical Examiner determined that the cause of death was homicidal asphyxia.