The Manhattan landlord of the 35-year-old Asian advertising creative who was knifed to death by a free-on-bail homeless career criminal ha...
The Manhattan landlord of the 35-year-old Asian advertising creative who was knifed to death by a free-on-bail homeless career criminal has slammed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for pinning the crime surge on child tax credits expiring.
Brian Chin called the left-wing firebrand 'unbelievably naïve and completely irresponsible' for comments she made the day after Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed 40 times in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Assamad Nash, 25, was arrested for the Sunday morning murder of Lee and was charged with sexually-motivated burglary by prosecutors Monday, as it was revealed Lee was found topless in the bathtub of her Chinatown apartment in the early hours of the morning. He is currently being held without bail.
‘My family’s owned this since the 1970s, we’ve lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s, all the bad times in New York and nothing’s ever happened like this,’ Chin told Fox News on Tuesday.
‘So we are, as a community, not only shocked and grieving, but also very, very scared. And rightfully angry at our elected officials who have driven us to this point and put this criminal on the streets.’
Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by a 'homeless serial criminal' who was free on bail
Assamad Nash, 25, has been accused of murdering her in her Chinatown apartment while on bail for a prior assault
Lee's landlord Brian Chin slammed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above) for pinning the crime surge on child tax credits expiring. The liberal firebrand made the comments to the New Yorker in a story published the day after the horrific crime
Chin told Fox News on Tuesday that the left-wing firebrand was 'unbelievably naïve and completely irresponsible' for her comments
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the New Yorker in a story published Monday that the government was 'contributing' to the surge in crime by allowing the child tax credit to expire.
'We don't want to say some of the things that are obvious, like, gee, the child-tax credit just ran out, on December 31st, and now people are stealing baby formula,' Ocasio-Cortez said.
'We don't want to have that discussion. We want to say these people are criminals or we want to talk about "people who are violent," instead of "environments of violence," and what we're doing to either contribute to that or dismantle that.'
Asked for his opinion on her comments, Chine said: ‘That is an unbelievably naïve statement and completely irresponsible on behalf of her, but it also shows the amount of distance that our elected officials have from the community themselves.’
He continued: ‘All of the crimes he committed, including the assault in the subway station, were just steps away from the building. This man was a menace to the community. He was an outright danger.’
‘But the police did their jobs excellently. They kept arresting him repeatedly. It was the politicians lax on crime policies that kept putting him on the street because the judges have to follow the rule of law, which the politicians have set in the city,’ Chin concluded.
Nash's charge of sexually-motivated burglary suggests a possible motive for the brutal murder, which shocked NYC and raised fresh questions about New York state's bail reforms.
Terrifying footage showed the man police say is Nash creep into the building behind Lee after she got out of a cab on Sunday
When she entered the building, she didn't realize that Nash - who did not appear to know her - had sneaked in behind her after watching her exit a taxi and was following her up six flights of stairs to her home
Chin said his other tenants are 'scared' and 'extremely angry' that Nash was on the streets given his past offenses. He and Eli Klein, Lee's former employer, shared their thoughts on the tragedy and the need to crack down on such horrific crimes in a Fox News interview Tuesday
Christina Yuna Lee was a freelance advertising creative from New Jersey who has spearheaded campaigns for brands including Equinox and Google.
Terrifying footage showed the man police say is Nash creep into the building behind Lee after she got out of a cab on Sunday.
When she entered the building, she didn't realize that Nash - who did not know her - had sneaked in behind her after watching her exit a taxi and was following her up six flights of stairs to her home.
Asked on Fox News how his other tenants are coping, Chin said: ‘A lot of us still can’t sleep, to be honest. I’ve only slept about three hours in the last nearly three days now. The building is still an active crime scene, the police have still not released the building. It has been a nightmare.’
‘But of course, our pain pales in comparison to that of the family. I just cannot imagine having a child taken away like this,’ he said.
Chin said his community is ‘scared’ and ‘extremely angry’ at the system that he says ‘repeatedly failed us.’ He said that while he has high hopes in Mayor Eric Adams to right the ship, he already feels betrayed by District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his soft-on-crime policies.
Nash's charge of sexually-motivated burglary suggests a possible motive for the brutal murder, which shocked NYC and raised fresh questions about New York state's bail reforms. The body of Christina Yuna Lee was wheeled out of her apartment above
Nash, 25, has been arrested seven times since 2017 and currently has three open cases in the Manhattan Criminal
Nash was found bloodied under Lee's bed with a wound on to his torso and cuts to his hands and shoulder, prosecutors said
Nash was remanded in custody after the hearing, and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue hospital
‘We are tired of hearing our officials utter empty platitudes while enacting none of the desperately needed reforms that need to take place,’ he said.
A Manhattan Criminal Court judge approved the district attorney's request on Monday to remand Nash, who was found bloodied under Lee's bed with a wound on to his torso and cuts to his hands and shoulder, prosecutors said. A yellow-handled knife was then found behind a dresser in the victim's bedroom.
'I didn't kill nobody,' Nash said while being led to his arraignment on Monday.
Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said Nash attempted to mislead police from breaking into Lee's apartment by imitating a woman's voice.
'We don't need the police here – go away,' Nash told police, according to Yoran, as he set up a blockade inside the apartment before NYPD's Emergency Service Unit busted the door down, half an hour later.
Once inside, police found Lee dead in her bathroom, naked from the waist up.
Eli Klein, Lee’s former employer, offered a touching tribute to her on Fox News on Tuesday, calling her one of the ‘nicest, most genuine, hardest-working, sweetest, most independent people that I’ve ever known.’
‘Learning what happened to her was devastating and I’m still reeling from this tragedy,’ he said. ‘Many of us can’t believe that this happened to Christina. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. It’s sickening how she was murdered and how brutal the crime was.’
‘We’re gonna have to live the rest of our lives knowing that this could have been preventable and this guy shouldn’t have been on the streets for one reason or another.’
Nash has three additional open criminal cases - one for assaulting a Brooklyn man, 63-year-old David Elliot, in a subway station.
He has been arrested multiple times for assault, possession of drugs and harassment over the last two years. He was due back in court for the Elliot case next month and is currently being held in Bellevue hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Elliot, who works at Rutgers University, told The New York Post he was shocked the 'clearly' mentally ill Nash was free to roam the streets after attacking him at Grand Central Station.
'I was watching the news at 5 o'clock, and I seen them taking him out of the apartment and I said, 'That's the guy that f***ing hit me!'' Elliot said.
'He shouldn't have been out on the streets — hell no.'
Elliot said he was swiping a friend into the subway when Nash approached him and told him not to do that. Elliot ignored him, and Nash punched him in the face.
'He came out of nowhere and just hit me,' Elliot told the paper.
'I used to box. I had four stitches from that punch. I feel he had something in his hand, like, between his knuckles, because for as many years as I boxed, you don't get split like that.'
Elliot chased Nash out of the station, and called police when he saw him darting between cars. He later identified him as his attacker.
Elliot said he feels terrible for Lee and her family.
'Lock these guys up and keep them there. This guy clearly has a lot of mental issues,' he said.
'We should just make sure he stays in jail.'
According to court records accessed by DailyMail.com, Nash has been arrested four times in the last year alone. His rap sheet included misdemeanor charges of assault, intentional damage to property, harassment, resisting arrest, both attempted and successful escape from police officers and selling a fare card.
Three of these cases remain open, and he has appeared in court on numerous occasions. He was set to appear again before a judge on March 9 on the assault, harassment and intentional damage to property charges.
'This all could have been avoided,' Chin told reporters Sunday night. 'This guy should never have been out of the street. And it's DA Alvin Bragg playing politics with people's lives and the Asian community has been hurt. To have a DA who has won those horrific crimes right on his doorstep. And he doesn't even bother to show up. It's disgraceful.'
Residents near the victim's building in Chinatown held a rally on Monday to decry violence against the Asian community
Chinatown community organizers held the rally on Monday to raise awareness to the open-air drug use, mental illness, homelessness and Anti-Asian violence that have plagued the neighborhood
Residents near the victim's building in Chinatown held a rally on Monday to decry violence against the Asian community.
Lee's apartment at 111 Chrystie Street is a block over from the Bowery, which is known for its cluster of food pantries and homeless shelters.
To highlight the trouble in the community, community organizers handing out maps showing the locations of five homeless shelters in the neighborhood with three more planned to be added to the area.
'Now all of a sudden on top of those five shelters they are dumping three more,' Chinatown activist Jackie Wong said at the rally.
'We're like enough is really enough. That's why we we are having problems.'
Across the street from her building Sara Roosevelt Park, has been a hot bed of street crime, homelessness and open-air drug use.
K. Webster, the president of the Sara Roosevelt Park Coalition, said that the homeless have been around the neighborhood for decades, but there has been an influx of mentally ill homeless that have created a new danger in the neighborhood.
'We have homeless people who help,' she said.
'We have homeless people who stopped a rape. We have homeless people who have who found the guy who assaulted a woman, who helped the police find the culprit.
'So we have had homeless people and that is one category and then we have people who are mentally ill. You can't have mentally ill people running around the streets.'
Chin told reporters that building has cameras on every floor, and that his family had installed steel doors on all the apartments.
Nearly every single police precinct in New York City has seen spikes in crime so far this year - including five in which the rate has doubled, new data from the NYPD shows
'We have such tight security in this building we have steel doors,' Chin said. 'It took a swat team over 10 minutes to gain access. These doors are designed to keep monsters out.'
But the suspect still found his way in.
'She got out of a cab right here and he followed her,' Chin said.
'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.'
Chin described Lee as a 'wonderful human being' whose 'smile lit up the room.'
'She came to the city for the lure of New York, you know, like the Big Apple, the big city, you know, boundless opportunities,' he said.
'So much blood. My wife said I should call someone to clean all the blood but I'm going to clean it up myself. It's the least I can do for that poor girl,' the building's owner said.
'She's from New Jersey, been here less than a year,' Chin told The Post. 'Such a sweet girl.
Another neighbor, Zyana Salazar, 27, told DailyMail.com: 'I just feel like he shouldn't been out.
'He was been let out with no bail.
'You know, this is why that happened.'
New York Governor Kathy Hochul tweeted that she was in mourning.
'We have seen far too many acts of violence against AAPI New Yorkers in recent months. We must make sure every community is safe in our state.
'I join New Yorkers standing together in support of our AAPI friends & neighbors.'
New York Mayor Eric Adams similarly condemned the murder.
'I and New Yorkers across the city mourn for the innocent woman murdered in her home last night in Chinatown and stand with our Asian brothers and sisters today,' Adams said in a statement on Sunday.
'The NYPD is investigating this horrific incident, and I thank them for apprehending the suspect. While the suspect who committed this heinous act is now in custody, the conditions that created him remain. The mission of this administration is clear: We won't let this violence go unchecked.'
Crime in the city has continued to spike, with overall crime having increased 41.65 percent, robbery up nearly 35 percent, and violent felonies up 13.3 percent through February 6 from the same time last year.
Meanwhile, nearly every police precinct in New York City has reported spikes in crime this year - including five in which the rate has doubled, new data from the New York Police Department shows.
'No neighborhood is safe,' one Brooklyn cop told The New York Post on Tuesday, offering a grim forecast for the future of the crime-ravaged city.
'At this rate, we will lose the city by St. Patrick's Day.'
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