The death of a New York City woman who police say was fatally stabbed by a homeless man who followed her into her apartment has sparked outrage and grief, especially in the Asian American community and among bail reform critics.
Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was killed early Sunday morning when Assamad Nash, a 25-year-old homeless man with a criminal background, allegedly followed her into her Chinatown walk-up and stabbed her to death with a knife from her own kitchen. Neighbors heard the struggle and called police, who found the alleged attacker covered in blood and trying to flee through the fire escape, the New York Daily News reported.
Nash barricaded himself further into the apartment until police broke down the door and found him hiding under Lee’s bed. Lee’s body was found in the bathtub. Nash was charged with murder and burglary Monday.
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“We’ve got cameras on every floor and in the front here,” the owner of the building told the New York Post. “She got out of a cab right here, and he followed her. He grabbed the front door just before it closed. He followed her all the way up, hanging back, staying one floor behind her all the way up to the sixth floor. Then, he waited until her door was just about closed and he went in.”
Police said they do not believe the fact that Lee was of Asian descent prompted the attack, though she is the latest Asian woman to be brutally murdered in recent months. Michelle Go’s death brought national attention to the attacks when she was thrown into the path of an oncoming subway train last month.
Leaders from New York’s Asian community organized a rally near Lee’s apartment Monday, chanting “enough is enough.”
“This is so gruesome and so horrible and so cruel,” said New York Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou. “We have to make sure that our city has to stop saying sorry, that our state stops saying sorry. Our communities deserve answers, and we haven’t been given any.”
The alleged perpetrator had multiple prior arrests and known mental health issues, according to the New York Post, prompting some to question why he was on the streets.
“If this guy has been in the system that many times, then someone should be checking him because they had to know that the man had a mental illness,” Kathryn Freed, a former state Supreme Court justice, said at the rally. “So many people who are in jail now should not be in jail. They should be in a mental institution that can deal with their problems. It’s not helping them, leaving them on the street or leaving them to deal with problems that they can’t deal with, that they’re not capable of dealing with, and at the same time, it’s putting society at risk.”
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State politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, expressed grief over Lee’s death, who was remembered as sweet, kind, and creative by the building owner and her employer.
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New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Giuliani blasted the state’s apparent soft-on-crime approach and bail reform that he believes led to Nash being free to commit the crime.
https://twitter.com/AndrewHGiuliani/status/1493200329000771586 Others, particularly Asian women, expressed shock and fear at the brutality and randomness of the attack.
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