A social justice advocate was stabbed to death in front of his girlfriend in a random New York City attack early Monday morning.
Video footage obtained by the New York Post shows Ryan Carson, 32, and his girlfriend, Claudia, sitting at a bus stop Monday in Brooklyn around 4am.
The couple had just left a wedding on Long Island, and they were seen walking down a street as a man in a dark-colored sweatshirt approached them and stabbed Carson to death.
Carson was a poet and activist who was working as a senior solid waste campaign manager at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) when he died.
Blair Horner, executive director of NYPIRG, said exclusively to Daily Express US: “Everyone loved him. He was a gregarious guy, big smile, loud laugh, smart, hard-working, always willing to pitch in, willing to give the shirt off his back if you needed it.”
Horner added: “Ryan viewed his life calling as helping others and he had a passion for social justice work.
“Right now, we’re dealing with the shock and doing our best to help console his family and friends.”
Carson worked with NYPIRG for a decade, and his job was to advocate for measures to reduce waste and enhance recycling.
Carson and his girlfriend, Claudia, had been walking down a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on Monday when the suspect – now identified as a “mentally disturbed” 18-year-old – began to assault him.
The teenager shouted ‘I’ll kill you’ as Carson put his hands up in surrender. The suspect pulled a knife and charged at Carson, causing him to trip and fall.
The assailant then dragged Carson by his coat to the ground and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest. Carson’s girlfriend watched in horror as Carson curled up on the ground, mortally wounded.
Another unidentified woman then appeared in the footage and yelled at the assailant, causing him to flee. The video ends with Carson’s girlfriend kneeling beside him on the ground and calling 911.
Carson was rushed to Kings County Hospital Center, but it was too late.
After he died, Carson’s girlfriend posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a heartbreaking note she found on Carson’s phone.
The note read: “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.”
Tom Krantz, one of Carson’s roommates, told the New York Post: “I don’t think anyone is exaggerating when they say he would give the shirt off his back. He was the guy that bent over backward time and time again to be there with his friends.”
More than 150 people showed up for a vigil held for Carson on Monday night in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where he was murdered.
The 18-year-old suspect, who has not been named publicly, is accused of killing Carson.
The NYPD is working to establish “probable cause to make this arrest,” according to Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
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