Authorities reported that a graduate from Columbia University was fatally stabbed while another man was injured in Upper Manhattan after an alleged gang member attacked the two within 15 minutes of each other, said police and college officials.
The university student was identified as Davide Giri who officials said was traveling home shortly before 11:00 p.m. after soccer practice when the suspect stabbed him in the abdomen. The incident occurred about two blocks from the victim's apartment building, said police and his friends. Authorities said Giri was immediately taken to a hospital but died due to his wounds.
Unprovoked Stabbing
Later, police arrested a 25-year-old in relation to the attacks and said that charges against him were pending. While authorities did not reveal the suspect's name and identity, they said he was found inside Central Park while intimidating a third man while holding a knife.
On Friday morning, the president of the university, Lee C. Bollinger, sent a campus-wide letter identifying the 30-year-old victim as a student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He also expressed his sincere sadness over the death of the student, the New York Times reported.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) said that officers responded to reports of a male assaulted and found Giri in the area with a stab wound to his abdomen. Officials also discovered a second victim, identified as a 27-year-old male, by West 110 Street and Cathedral Parkway with a stab wound to his torso.
Police searched the area and later identified the suspect as Vincent Pinckney and took him into custody. It was later found that the suspect is on parole from a 2018 assault case and is reportedly a gang member.
As of Friday morning, Pinckney has not been formally charged with any crime but was expected to be arraigned later in the afternoon. The NYPD was still investigating the incident while another Columbia student called the stabbing "another senseless killing" in a Friday Facebook post, Fox News reported.
Gang Member Violence
Sources said that Pinckney was part of the Bloods gang off-shoot, known as Every Body Killas, and that he had 11 prior arrests as far back as 2012. The list of Pinckney's crimes includes robberies, assaults, and other alleged crimes, said police.
In 2015, the suspect had been convicted of gang assault when he joined three other people in assaulting a man and repeatedly slashed him in the face with a blade. The incident occurred on Linden Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, and happened two years before his conviction.
The victim of the 2015 incident required him to get 20 staples to close the massive gash caused by the attack on the back of his head. He also needed 25 stitches for a large cut wound that stretched from his right eye to his right ear.
The state Department of Corrections records showed that Pinckney served three years out of his four-year prison sentence. Now, police were investigating whether or not a stabbing attack inside Morningside Park the day before was linked to the suspect, the New York Post reported.
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