The family of a woman who was stabbed to death in her Manhattan apartment last year has sued New York City police, saying their inaction cost the victim her life.
The lawsuit filed on Friday claims two officers stood outside Christina Yuna Lee’s apartment in Chinatown while she was being stabbed to death by an unhoused man who followed her into her building as she returned home in the early morning.
Even though neighbors had called 911 early on during the attack and two officers arrived promptly, they waited 80 minutes to go inside her apartment.
Once inside, they recovered her brutally stabbed body in her bathtub, and found her killer Assamad Nash hiding under a bed. He was arrested after trying to flee through a window.
Friday’s lawsuit and others like it can generally be difficult to win for plaintiffs. While carrying out their duties, police officers and other first responders are generally afforded qualified immunity, which protects them from civil liability for any actions that do not expressly violate a clearly established constitutional right.
Meanwhile, courts have previously found that police officers are not legally duty bound to provide protection to citizens even if they call upon them for help.
The lawsuit nonetheless seeks damages for Lee’s family in connection with her death, and it also demands that New York police be held liable for failing to keep her neighborhood safe.
The lawsuit makes reference to the 2021 killing of delivery driver Sala Miah in a park near Lee’s residence. His face had been slashed, he had stab wounds to his stomach and his bike had been stolen.
“By failing to control dangerous conditions in Sara D Roosevelt Park, [police] intentionally, recklessly, and negligently created a nuisance,” the suit said, according to the Daily Beast.
Lee was a creative producer for a music platform, and her death was the second of two high-profile murders of Asian American women in quick succession at the beginning of 2022.
Her killing took place less than a month after another man pushed Michelle Alyssa Go in front of an oncoming train in Manhattan.
The murders took place amid a wider rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country after the illness which drove the Covid pandemic was first detected in China.
