Court documents shed more light on arrest in deadly stabbing of Katie Suarez on Brooklyn bike path
Court documents have revealed more about how the NYPD located and arrested a suspect in the alleged deadly stabbing of a jogger in Brooklyn.
Sayed Mohassib, 27, of Bath Beach, offered a blank stare as he pleaded not guilty to multiple charges Saturday night in the Oct. 30 stabbing of 28-year-old Katie Suarez along the Shore Parkway greenway.
Police say Mohassib stabbed Suarez in the neck while she was out for a run on the path, which is near the Belt Parkway. He is facing charges of second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He was ordered held without bail and remains behind bars at Kings County Supreme Court.
He is expected to be back in court on Tuesday morning.
Court documents say video surveillance captured Mohassib walking into the area of the running path before the stabbing and running away after the attack. It then captured him coming home, and coming out 15 minutes later in his underwear, throwing his clothes into a trash chute. The documents go on to say that Mohassib admitted to going to the bike path with a knife, "or people were going to come and kill his family."
However, officials say Mohassib said that he didn't stab anyone, saying instead that he "sat down on a bench and became covered in blood."
The complaint states a detective saw the suspect cleaning off a reddish stain from a wall in his apartment.
Mohassib is a New York City Department of Education employee, an ex-Marine, and an ex-member of the NYPD. Police sources say he works at Public School 200. A DOE spokesperson has since said he has been suspended, and that it "will move to terminate employment pending the outcome of the conviction."
The Marine Corps confirmed that Mohassib was discharged after serving for less than a month, writing, in part, "His service was incongruent with Marine Corps' expectations and standards."
Police sources say Mohassib was with the NYPD for about a month in 2022, field training in the Bronx.
Some local residents who were on the bike path on Sunday said they are now thinking twice about going there alone and want to see more eyes on the path itself.
"It's scary. We think we live in a safe place. I'm glad that they caught him, but it's very, very scary," one person said.
"Scary in a neighborhood like this. I mean, I would say it's a fairly safe neighborhood as well. It's um, terrible," a cyclist said.
"Sometimes, they patrol, but it would be better to have more people patrolling," another person added.