A man has been arrested following the fatal stabbing of a former convict who had allegedly assaulted the man’s girlfriend.
The incident is said to have happened on a Brooklyn train after the ex-prisoner began harassing the couple on board. When he punched the woman in the face, her boyfriend is said to have knifed him in the chest, police said on Wednesday.
Devictor Ouedraogo, 36, was said to have been hassling other commuters on the northbound train approaching Marcy Avenue station in Williamsburg when he moved on to argue with Jordan Williams, 20, and his girlfriend. During the clash, Ouedraogo, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, hit the woman in the face.
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Ouedraogo and Williams began fighting as the train was moving and shortly afterwards the younger man is alleged to have produced a knife, stabbing his victim twice, police sources said. As the train arrived at Marcy Avenue, the wounded man stumbled out of the train and fell on to the platform.
Officers responded to a 911 call about the stabbing just after 8pm on Tuesday night, according to officers. Emergency Medical Services were also called to the scene and rushed Ouedraogo to Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The couple were said to have remained on the train, but were tracked down by police at the Chauncey Street station, the New York Post reported. Williams, of Hollis, Queens, was charged late on Wednesday morning with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
The woman was also taken into custody as a “person of interest,” police said, but was later released without charge. Police said the couple did not know Ouedraogo prior to the incident. Detectives are said to be looking at cellphone footage of the fight that led to the stabbing.
Prison records showed that Ouedraogo was jailed in August 2009 for an attempted robbery in Queens. He was sentenced to three and a half years and was paroled in April of 2012.
Williams’ attorney, Jason Goldman, told reporters he was unhappy with the arrest of his client. “It’s upsetting to see that Mr Williams is even being charged without a thorough investigation,” he said. “We already know that the victim punched his girlfriend and menaced passengers.”
He suggested that Williams’ arrest had more to do with his “skin color” and the fact he came “from a particular neighborhood”.
He added: “Those very factors will likely result in Mr Williams, a young boy, fighting this case of clear self-defense from a cage at Rikers (New York City’s largest jail).”
