According to police sources on Wednesday, an 18-year-old man who is considered to be mentally disturbed has been named as a person of interest in the arbitrary stabbing death of a well-liked poet and social justice activist in Brooklyn.
The man who is seen on camera brutally stabbing community activist Ryan Carson, 32, in front of his girlfriend is thought to be a teenager who lives nearby where the horrifying mu*rder occurred early on Monday, according to investigators.
He is not yet in custody.
On Wednesday, police acknowledged that they had located a suspect, but they withheld his name from the public.
At a press conference unrelated to this story, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny stated that investigators are trying to find “probable cause to make this arrest.”
According to sources, the teenager attends a high school in Clinton Hill and is well-known to hang out near Fort Greene’s Commodore Barry Park.
Since juvenile records are sealed, it is unknown if he has any. According to the sources, he was the victim of a robbery in 2021 and received three summonses in 2022, two of which were for disorderly conduct.
After a fight, his aunt reported to 911 about two months ago that her nephew, whom she described as mentally disturbed, had become enraged and had smashed things in his girlfriend’s flat.
The sources claimed that although he was not detained in the incident on July 14, a report of the incident was made.
Investigators surmise that the attacker may have been fighting with his girlfriend once more prior to violently attacking Carson, a total stranger who happened to be in his path.
Before the stabbing, Kenny observed, “The person who did the stabbing was seen on the corner with a female acting very agitated.”
Carson, a longtime campaign organiser for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and his girlfriend were returning home from a wedding at around four in the morning on Monday when they paused to talk at the B38 bus stop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is located at Lafayette Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard.
Then, a man approached from across the street, as seen on security footage that The Post was able to access. According to witnesses and surveillance footage, the couple noticed the suspect, who was about 40 feet ahead of them, kicking and smashing mopeds and scooters that were parked on the sidewalk. At that point, they got up and started to walk.
The lunatic abruptly spun around and exclaimed, “What the f–k are you looking at?”
Kenny told reporters on Wednesday that “Mr. Carson then immediately places himself between the man and his female companion to protect her” before making an effort to “de-escalate” the situation.
The video shows the pair fighting as the suspect kept saying, “I’ll ki*ll you!” Carson urged him to stop before the insane man pulled a knife.
Just as the couple was about to fall over the bench they had been sitting on, Carson started to back up and attempted to run in that direction.
Kenny stated, “Then, the unidentified male stabs Mr. Carson three times, striking him once in the right chest.” “Mr. Carson dies as a result of the knife piercing his heart.”
“The man holding the knife kicks Mr Carson in the chest, spits in her face and threatens to stab the woman companion as he lies dying on the sidewalk.”
Kenny said that a woman who appeared to be the attacker’s girlfriend yelled at him to stop, “and apologises to the couple as she mutters the name Brian.”
While calling 911, Carson’s girlfriend was holding her mortally wounded beau in her arms. After being taken to Kings County Hospital Centre, Carson was not going to survive.
The 31-year-old flatmate of Carson, Tom Krantz, had previously told The Post, “It’s a horrific, brutal mur*der of someone who worked piously to help make this city a better place.”
Krantz described him as the “epitome of an entire community that he created, that he brought together,” noting that “how much he actually did for the entire city and for his friends” was astounding.
His flatmate said, “I don’t think anyone is exaggerating when they say he would give the shirt off his back.” “He was the guy who consistently went above and beyond to support his friends.”
In 2010, Carson relocated to New York City from the Boston region in order to enrol at Pratt Institute. He developed into a vocal environmental and sustainable activist during his 13 years in the city, according to Krantz, and he was skilled at uniting people behind a cause.
Acadia Cutschall, 32, a former classmate of Carson’s, described him as her “best friend” and related an incident in which he stopped a robber from robbing him.
She recalled being there when “he literally talked a guy out of mugging him.” “He gave him a little cash.”
If given the chance, she said, Carson would have most likely attempted to assist the man who k*illed him, and if he had the ability to talk about his own death, he wouldn’t have made it about himself.
It wouldn’t be about him, Krantz declared. “It would involve attempting to resolve the current situation.”
Carson’s girlfriend, Claudia, shared a heartbreaking note she discovered written in his phone the morning after his mur*der.
“When you get right down to it, all I want is to love Claudia more than she’s ever been loved, which is frankly all she’s ever deserved,” he wrote, according to a screenshot she posted to X.
“I found this note in Ryan’s phone,” she wrote in the post. “He did, he did, he did.”
