Manhattan Stabbing

Robbery of Transit Worker Turns Into Knife Fight, Killing One

By AL BAKER

A New York City Transit worker walking home after a late shift, three suspected muggers armed with a curved knife and a bystander whose role was unclear converged on a rainy street in Upper Manhattan late Thursday in a blood-soaked encounter that left the bystander stabbed to death and two others — including the transit worker — hospitalized.

Hours after the midnight attack at 139th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, detectives were still trying to reconstruct what had happened.

As of late Friday, investigators said, one thing was clear: It appeared that the transit worker, Maurice Parks, 39, a subway motorman, was a victim who decided to fight back. He told investigators he was attacked in 1994, and fought back that time, too.

Police officials said it appeared that the bystander, Flonarza M. Byas, 28, who died less than an hour after the attack, had either tried to help Mr. Parks or had inadvertently gotten in the way of the mugging. But they also said he might have witnessed the mugging and joined in, or thought that Mr. Parks was the attacker and then unintentionally sought to help the real criminals.

Mr. Parks was attacked from behind, hit on the side of the head and knocked to the ground after he emerged from the subway at 135th Street and walked a few blocks, the police said. Once he was down, the assailants started beating Mr. Parks and took a denim bag packed with clothes and a $200 money order. One of the muggers pulled a knife, and Mr. Parks pulled one too, the police said.

The conductor apparently carried the knife — a straight blade held in a sheath — for just this reason, so he could defend himself, one law enforcement official said. Who stabbed whom first remained unclear Friday, though Mr. Parks told investigators that he was wounded first. Mr. Parks, who lives in that neighborhood, was stabbed in the abdomen and slashed in the hands; Mr. Byas was stabbed in the chest, back and leg; and one other man involved, Hector Cruz, 21, was stabbed twice in the abdomen, the police said.

Investigators said that it remained unclear who had stabbed Mr. Parks — a suspect in the mugging, Leandro Ventura, 15, and Mr. Cruz blame each other — but that it appeared that Mr. Parks stabbed Mr. Cruz and Mr. Byas.

The police said that they believed Mr. Byas was a drifter with no fixed address and that he received a summons 20 minutes before the attack on a trespassing charge in a nearby park. But Mr. Byas’s brother and fiancée said he was not homeless and was employed as an accountant at a Manhattan wig store.

“He was a really good person, a person I really loved a lot,” said the fiancée, Stephanie C. Diaz, 22, who said she and Mr. Byas became engaged last year. “We had a lot of plans for us; it’s just hard to see that go away.”

The law enforcement official said Mr. Byas “wandered into the middle of it, unbeknownst to the victim, Parks.” The official said that Mr. Parks appeared to believe Mr. Byas was an assailant — so he stabbed him. “That is what it looks like,” the official said.

A second official said another possibility was that Mr. Byas might have mistaken Mr. Parks for a criminal.

“He probably stepped in to help, but it might have been difficult to tell who was the aggressor and who was the victim,” the second official said. “He could have been stabbed by both of them, for all we know.”

When police officers arrived on the street in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood, Mr. Cruz, who was bleeding, and Mr. Ventura, flagged them down.

Mr. Parks and Mr. Byas were lying on the ground next to each other less than a block to the west. Mr. Parks identified Mr. Ventura as one of his assailants, the police said, and the three wounded men were taken by ambulance to Harlem Hospital Center, where Mr. Byas was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m. ...

The above is from today's New York Times.  It's interesting to watch, amidst all the gentrification, the real NYC suddenly reappear with all its violence intact.