The New York Police Department arrested a public school teacher’s aide linked to the deadly stabbing of a female jogger who was seemingly attacked at random along a Brooklyn running trail.
Police identified the suspect as Sayed Mohassib, a 27-year-old who worked for the city’s public schools and briefly held a job as an NYPD officer.
He faces murder, weapons and tampering with evidence charges in the Oct. 30 slaying of Katie Suarez.
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday that his administration is doing a full review into how the suspect managed to be hired at two city jobs despite concerns about his mental stability.
“This attack on Katie Suarez was horrific,” Mr. Mamdani said at a press conference. “This is something that leaves, not only our hearts with her loved ones and her friends and her families who were shattered by this, but also to emphasize our commitment to hold the individual responsible fully accountable.”
Court documents said surveillance footage captured Mr. Mohassib walking on the running trail before and after the stabbing.
Prosecutors said he told detectives that he took a knife with him to the trail because “people were going to come and kill his family.”
He told police that he “became covered in blood,” although he claimed he did not stab anyone, court records said.
Mr. Mohassib went home afterward to get rid of his blood-soaked clothing and the knife, the documents said. He also washed the blood off his hands and scrubbed the blood out of his apartment.
Another surveillance camera captured him leaving his home about 15 minutes after he had returned to throw a garbage bag down a trash chute while wearing only his underwear.
The criminal complaint said Mr. Mohassib confirmed that he was depicted in video footage when asked by detectives.
He is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.
The NYPD said the suspect worked for the department in November 2022 before being granted leave for the military.
The Marine Corps said in a statement that his assignment in South Carolina was cut short after a month because “his service was incongruent with Marine Corps’ expectations and standards.”
Mr. Mohassib tried to rejoin the NYPD in January 2023, but officials told CNN that he “exhibited concerning behavior and appeared disheveled.” He was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Ms. Suarez’s slaying rocked her family, who told WABC-TV that they went looking for her on the trail when she stopped responding to their texts. Her father found her wounded along the path, and she was rushed to a hospital, where she died.
“She never thought that something like this could happen to her, because I would always tell her, ’honey, you have to be careful, you have to be careful,’ and she would say, ’ma, nothing is going to happen to me, ma I’ll be fine, nothing is going to happen to me, ma,’” her mother, Yasira Suarez, told the station.
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