A 40-year-old homeless man was arrested Wednesday for murder and attempted murder in the stabbing of three homeless men in Manhattan, one person died, police said. The men were all sleeping outdoors when they were attacked during the previous week.
The man, Trevon Murphy, 40, who has a history of arrests and what his cousin says is mentally ill, was discovered by a retired corrections officer at about 6:45 a.m. Wednesday near a Wednesday morning. park in Harlem, at West 128th Street and St Nicholas Avenue, said Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Mayor Eric Adams.
Retired editor, Ruben Arias, said he was riding a bus when he saw a man sitting on a bus stop bench, wearing neon sneakers and a black hoodie that resembled the Stupid Project logo. Poetry that the man in the police photo. circulated on Tuesday already worn.
Mr Arias, 55, told the driver to let him off and approached two policemen nearby. “I said, ‘Listen, I just spotted this man walking around stabbing people,’” he said. The officers didn’t believe him, he added, so he called 911.
Mr. Arias, a retoucher for 21 years who worked at Rikers Island, said he stood about a foot away from Mr. Murphy because he didn’t want him to go anywhere.
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Police quickly arrived, apprehended Mr. Murphy without a fight and found a knife in his pocket, said Assistant Chief Joseph Kenny. Mr Murphy “declared to investigators to identify himself in still photographs related to the attacks” Sheriff Kenny said.
The president of the city’s corrections officers union, Benny Boscio Jr., praised Arias’ quick thinking. “Even as retirees, our officers maintain a deep commitment to keeping our city safe, which is exactly what the corrections officer retired from,” he said. retiree Ruben Arias did today.
According to police, Mr. Murphy approached a man sleeping on a bench by the Hudson River in the West Village on July 5 and stabbed him in the stomach; The man died at Bellevue hospital.
On July 8, police said, Murphy stabbed another man sleeping on a bench at Madison Avenue and East 49th Street in Midtown. And early Monday, they said, he stabbed a third man sleeping in a playground on East 95th Street, Upper East Side. The two men survived in stable condition on Tuesday, police said. Police have not released a motive for the attacks.
Murphy’s cousin, Tameka Wilkerson of Knoxville, Tenn., said Mr Murphy had had “mental problems” for many years and that he sometimes suffered from paranoia, “hearing voices” and “seeing” everyone”.
Growing up in Knoxville, Murphy, the son of a hospital nurse, “liked playing video games, telling jokes and enjoying sports, just an ordinary teenage boy,” Ms. Wilkerson said.
She said he worked as a patient transporter at a hospital before the mental illness overtook him, and she had not contacted him for several years. She and several other family members heard of his passing.
New York police say an arrest warrant has been issued for Murphy in Tennessee for violating probation on drug charges.
While it’s unclear when he moved to New York, he was a customer of the city’s Department of Homeless Services for the first time in 2018, according to an employee of a homeless service provider. spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized. to discuss Mr. Murphy’s case.
In April this year, Mr Murphy was accused of assaulting a sleeping roommate at a homeless shelter near La Guardia Airport. According to court papers, Mr Murphy’s roommate “was woken up in the face” and found Mr Murphy as the only person in the room. Mr Murphy was released on bail without bail and is due to appear in court next week on assault charges.
“This man should not be on our street,” Commissioner Sewell said.
Mr. Murphy was in a shelter in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in April and May of this year, the homeless services officer said.
Homeless people with serious mental illnesses have been charged in a recent series of high-profile attacks, including a woman’s fatal push before a subway train in January of a man with schizophrenia and who was bounced around prisons, hospitals and city streets for decades.
That murder shed light on a broken New York homeless emergency psychiatric care system in which hospitals repeatedly dump patients out without stabilizing them, and it caused Officials must implement a series of programs designed to increase accountability and prevent people from passing. Cracks.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Adams chaired the opening of a Bronx facility for people with mental health crises, a “center of support and connection” run by healthcare providers. mental health work and aim as an alternative to sending people to the hospital or arresting them. .
“The answer to a mental health crisis is not a public safety response,” the mayor said. “It’s a health response and changing that dynamic is very important.”
