Homeless man at the post office in Grand Central, NYC
Photo: ANDRÉS CORREA GUATARASMA / Courtesy
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Trevon Murphy was arrested on suspicion of stabbing at least three homeless people in Manhattan (NYC), killing one of them.
The 40-year-old suspect allegedly admitted it was his “choice” to stab his victims in the guts, saying he used a serrated blade because he wanted to “drag bits of intestine with it,” prosecutors said yesterday.
Murphy was held without bail at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges that killed a homeless man and injured two others during the span of a week, always nailing a knife in the abdomen of his victims while they slept.
“It focused on vulnerable, defenseless and homeless victims, all of whom were asleep and with their backs to the defendant”
Fiscal Adjutant Shilpa Kalra
Murphy was arrested in Upper Manhattan on Wednesday after a retired Rikers Island prison guard recognized him in footage released by the NYPD and called authorities. He was charged with murder, two attempted murders and two counts of assault.
The murder happened in the early hours of July 5 in a park in the West Village in Manhattan. The other two following attacks were on Friday the 8th at Madison Av and 49th St and on Monday July 11 at the Stanley Isaacs Playground of the UES, leaving the victims seriously injured.
The stabber allegedly gave a full confession to the police after his arrest, luridly revealing to cops that he chose to stab his victims in the guts because it was his “stabber’s choice,” Deputy District Attorney Shilpa Kalra said in court.
He bought the weapon used in the three attacks at a hardware store.and chose one that would maximize carnage, since “a knife with a flat edge would go in and out easily, whereas this knife you bought would drag pieces of intestine out with it,” the prosecutor said.
“It focused on vulnerable, defenseless and homeless victims, all of whom were asleep and with their backs to the defendant,” detailed the prosecutor, quoted by New York Post.. “These people, sleeping and seeking respite in the only places they could find, were violently awoken when this defendant stabbed them all in the lower abdomen with a large, serrated knife.”
Prosecutors asked the court to detain Murphy, who he has a long criminal record in his home state of Tennessee and an open assault case in Queens (NYC) since presumably beat up his roommate at a homeless shelter.
In the three cases of attacks on homeless people, the police obtained a video of the suspect wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the logo of the organization “The Innocence Project”. The nonprofit group that works to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted said it was not aware of any connection between them and Murphy.
In a similar case, in March authorities in Washington DC arrested Gerald Brevard, an alleged gunman in connection with the homicides of homeless men in their sleep in New York City and the nation’s capital.
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