In 1991, Ferguson rented a room in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was unemployed and lived around many other West Indian immigrants. Neighbors said that he dressed very neatly but kept to himself and rarely smiled or spoke to anybody, except occasionally to say hello. "He had delusions of grandeur," his landlord Patrick Denis recounted. "He felt like, 'I'm such a great person. There must be only one thing holding me back. It must be white people.'" In 1992, Ferguson's ex-wife filed a complaint with police alleging that he pried open the trunk of her car. Prior to the shooting, she had not seen him since the divorce.