A homeless New York City criminal with a lengthy rap sheet is suspected of stabbing an Asian woman to death in her apartment Sunday. The victim’s landlord slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the wake of the vicious murder.
Assamad Nash, 25, who has 8 prior arrests, is the alleged suspect who fatally stabbed 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee in her Lower East Side Chinatown apartment, the New York Daily News reported. He faces murder and burglary charges, according to WNYW.
Police said three of Nash’s previous arrests are “still pending in Manhattan court, mostly for low-level offenses in the subway system,” the New York Daily News wrote.
The outlet reports:
He was freed without bail in three of those cases including a Sept. 28 assault case where he punched a man at a subway turnstile and a Jan. 6 arrest on charges of criminal mischief and escaping police custody. Nash was due back in court on all three outstanding offenses on March 3.
Surveillance video from Lee’s apartment building at 111 Chrystie Street shows a man following her through the hallways. Lee had taken a cab home on Sunday after a night out.
Around 4:30 a.m., a neighbor from across the hallway called 911 and reported a dispute after hearing Lee scream from the apartment, Breitbart News reported, citing the New York Post. When officers arrived, Nash allegedly tried to flee down a fire escape before barricading himself in Lee’s apartment on the 6th floor.
“When I heard that he tried to flee via the fire escape, my heart dropped, because in order to get down there, you have to pass my window,” said a woman who lives on the building’s second floor, per WABC.
Breitbart News reported:
The NYPD dispatched its Emergency Service Unit to the scene, which gained entry to the apartment by breaking down the door, an NYPD spokesman and a source told the Post. Once inside, authorities located the blood-covered suspect and found the victim in a bathtub “bleeding from multiple wounds to the body,” said the unidentified source and the spokesman.
A knife was located at the scene, according to WABC. Lee was pronounced dead at 5:55 a.m. and Nash was arrested around 6:00 a.m., Breitbart News reported. Though Lee is an Asian woman, police do not believe the murder was a hate crime.
The building’s landlord, Brian Chin, said the suspect should not have been free on the streets to carry out such a heinous murder, the New York Daily News reports.
“This never should have happened,” Chin said. “This guy should never have been here, with the rap sheet he has. He should’ve been behind bars. He shouldn’t have been on the street, and then this never would’ve happened.”
Chin ripped Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for Lee’s death:
From a landlord’s perspective, from storeowner’s perspective, we’re terrified of this, his policies and what not. Armed robbery of a store is now a petty larceny? What insanity is this? This guy, his rap sheet is a mile long, he should have been behind bars. Assault? Menacing? How is he out? This is outrageous.
We’ve been staunch members of this community and supporters of this community since we built it. And to see the destruction wrecked over one mayor’s term and one DA’s term, it’s not just shocking and appalling, it’s outrageous just from a personal level as well.
Just days before Lee was viciously murdered, Bragg told the Association for a Better New York (ABNY) that his office’s top priority is guns.
“Unquestionably, in this moment, the number one priority for the office in [sic] guns,” he told the ABNY Wednesday, according to Spectrum News NY1.
A woman who lives in the neighborhood told the New York Daily News that the area desperately needs proactive policing.
“We need things to be prevented, not just confronted when they happen,” said the woman named Destiny, who did not want to be identified by her last name. “Things like this don’t happen in the building, but they do happen in this area. So it’s almost not surprising.”
“It is terrifying,” She added. “You just don’t know what anybody is capable of.”
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