NEW YORK — Murder charges were filed on Monday against a homeless man accused of following a woman into her Chinatown building and stabbing her to death inside her apartment as she desperately screamed for help.
Victim Christina Yuna Lee’s cries were still ringing in the ears of a neighbor a day after he called 911 hoping against hope that police would arrive in time to save her from an intruder. But by the time cops got into the apartment, she was dead in a bathtub.
Her bloodied suspected killer, Assamad Nash, was hiding under a bed, cops said.
“I heard her screaming for help,” the 24-year-old neighbor said. “I went out into the hallway when I heard the first commotion. I heard someone else inside her apartment. He was trying to make her quiet, not in an aggressive way. I heard something that made it seem like he possibly had a firearm; because of that I went back into my own apartment. I was scared for my own safety. That’s when I called 911.”
Police said Nash, 25, did not have a gun. He allegedly killed Lee with a knife from her own kitchen. It’s still not clear what drove Nash to allegedly follow her into her apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side, but police sources said detectives do not believe she was targeted because she was Asian.
When police first arrived at the scene, the blood-soaked suspect tried to get away via a fire escape, then retreated back into the apartment, where he barricaded himself until police broke down the door and arrested him.
Sources said the suspect had cuts on his upper body, although it was not yet clear if he stabbed himself or if Lee stabbed him during their life-and-death struggle.
Nash is charged with burglary in addition to murder. As he awaited arraignment, Nash slept soundly in a cell alongside other inmates waiting to appear in court, sources said.
In a criminal complaint filed after one of Nash’s arrests last year for allegedly selling MetroCards, Nash professed his love for the synthetic marijuana K2.
“Can I get my K2 back?” he said, according to court papers. “I love K2.”
It’s not clear if Nash had been using drugs before the Chinatown attack. But homeless people at nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park, where Nash was known to hang out, said he was a regular K2 user.
“He was off. He talked to everybody,” said Rudy Rodriguez, 28, who lives in the park. “He smoked cigarettes with that K2. He’s been out here for two or three years.”
Mayor Eric Adams, in Albany to meet with state legislators, touched briefly on the attack, vaguely referencing legal “loopholes” that he believes are to blame for the city’s recent crime spike.
“My heart goes out to the family,” Adams told reporters. “This is a devastating crime that took place, and we need to make sure that we close the loopholes that allow dangerous people to be on the streets, so we use this term to identify everything that’s wrong with the criminal justice system.”
Sources said Nash has a New Jersey record, including for robbery and burglary, going back at least 10 years.
He has eight prior arrests in New York City, mostly for low-level subway offenses.
Outraged residents and community leaders gathered outside Lee’s apartment building, where the unsuspecting victim was stalked before her death. There, the crowd chanted, “Enough is enough.”
Though police did not charge Nash with a hate crime, some residents and community leaders said it should not be ruled out as a motive.
“I am outraged at a city with a mental health system which is broken again and again and again,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “We are seeing violence directed at the Asian-American community disproportionally, undeniably driven by bigotry, by xenophobia, by racism.”
“If this guy has been in the system that many times, then someone should be checking him because they had to know that the man had a mental illness,” said Kathryn Freed, 75, a former state Supreme Court justice, who served on the City Council and lives blocks from where Lee was killed.
“We’re using the criminal justice system to deal with mental health — it’s our fallback, our default position. So many people who are in jail now should not be in jail. They should be in a mental institution that can deal with their problems.”
Lee was remembered by her friends and co-workers for her kindness and creativity. Splice, an online digital platform where she worked as a creative producer, called her a “beautiful friend and colleague.”
“Over the weekend our beloved Christina Lee was senselessly murdered in her home,” a company representative said in a social media post. “Our hearts are broken. Always dedicated to making beautiful and inclusive artwork, Christina is irreplaceable. As we start to process this tragedy, we ask that you remember Christina Lee as the magical person she was, always filled with joy. We wish peace upon her family in their grief.”
Lee’s marketing work included designs and videos for retail, fashion, fitness, media, art and music. She studied at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in art history.
Lee had also worked at Eli Klein Gallery, where she helped move the operation from SoHo to Chelsea.
“She was an extraordinarily kind soul,” owner Eli Klein said. “All of my artists, the curators, everyone uniformly universally loved Christina.”
Anger over Lee’s grisly murder quickly focused on bail reform. Though much of the venom was aimed at Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and his perceived soft-on-crime approach, most of Nash’s prior alleged crimes occurred when Cy Vance Jr. was DA.
Authorities said Nash also had 18 priors in New Jersey. Those offenses included arrests for burglary, carjacking, criminal mischief and robbery.
Nash was charged in the Lower East Side assault of David Elliot, 62, in September. Elliot said Nash punched him in the face, an attack that left him needing four stitches on his left forehead.
“That son of a b---,” Elliot told the Daily News on Monday, describing his reaction to learning his attacker is now charged in the murder. “I was kind of shocked. I didn’t think he was that much out there.”
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(Kerry Burke of the New York Daily News contributed to this report.)
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