Sayed Mohassib, 27, a former NYPD officer who worked as a school aide for the New York City Department of Education, has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of 28-year-old jogger Katie Suarez on a Brooklyn bike path — and his history raises hard questions about how he came to work around children.
Katie Suarez was jogging on the Shore Parkway Greenway bike path in the Bath Beach area of Brooklyn on Oct. 30 when she was attacked in what has been described as an apparently random attack. She did not return from her run and did not answer her phone. Her father found her, and she was bleeding heavily from the neck. She was taken to a hospital, where she died. Her mother has said she fought for several days before dying. Mohassib was arrested and arraigned on Saturday, Nov. 7. He is charged with murder, along with two counts each of evidence tampering and weapon possession. He has not been convicted of anything, and he is presumed innocent. No defense statement has been made public. Prosecutors, citing the criminal complaint, allege that surveillance video shows Mohassib walking toward the path before the attack and running from the area afterward. The complaint alleges that video also shows him returning home and emerging fifteen minutes later wearing only underwear, then throwing items into a garbage chute. Prosecutors say he confirmed it was him when detectives showed him the video.
“The safety of our students is our very top priority.” — New York City Department of Education statement
Mohassib was a paraprofessional, or school aide, with the city Department of Education, working at an elementary school in Brooklyn. Law enforcement officials say he kept reporting to work around children after the stabbing. The department has suspended him and says it will move to terminate his employment pending the case outcome. His earlier career is on record. The NYPD says he served a little over a month in Oct. 2022 before being granted extended military leave. His firearm was removed in late Nov. 2022 and never returned. He filed to resign Dec. 16, 2022, then asked to be reinstated in Jan. 2023, and the request was denied. The NYPD said supervisors observed concerning behavior and that he appeared disheveled, and he was transported to Bellevue Hospital that same day. The Marines say his last duty assignment was Dec. 15, 2022, in South Carolina, and that his premature discharge indicates his service was incongruent with Corps expectations and standards. City Council member Kayla Santosuosso, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes and Assembly member-elect Chris McCreight called for a full investigation into the circumstances of his hiring and continued employment. State Sen. Stephen Chan called his working at a school an atrocity on its own.
Fairness first: a person with a mental-health history is not a threat by default, and nobody should be shut out of public service on that basis alone. Most people who struggle with their mental health never harm anyone, and the presumption of innocence applies to Mohassib as it does to every defendant. But the public is entitled to ask a plain question. When an agency has documentation that a former officer was stripped of his firearm, sent for evaluation, denied reinstatement and discharged early from the Marines, who connects those dots before he is placed around children? Parents assume that someone in the building has looked at the whole file. The officials calling for a full investigation are asking exactly the right thing. There is a second question that matters just as much: what happened after Oct. 30? If law enforcement officials are right that he kept reporting to work, then accountability cannot stop at the hiring desk. Government that asks parents to hand over their children every morning owes them answers, not statements about priorities.
A few terms are worth understanding. Being charged is not being convicted. The details of the alleged video evidence and the statements attributed to Mohassib come from prosecutors and the criminal complaint, and they are allegations that must be tested in court. A paraprofessional is a school aide who supports classroom staff, not a licensed teacher. Prosecutors say Mohassib told police he went to the path with a knife because people were going to come and kill his family. They say he also told police he sat on a bench and became covered in blood but did not stab anyone. His mother, Fatma Mohassib, told a TV station she was in deep pain, described him as a good person who had been in the Boy Scouts and attended mosque, and acknowledged concerns about his mental health.
Source:School aide who briefly served as NYPD officer arrested in fatal stabbing of Brooklyn jogger
Think about the last time you dropped a child at school. You walked away without a second thought, because you trusted that someone had checked who was behind that door. That quiet trust is the foundation of every public school in America, and it is only as strong as the vetting behind it. A young woman went out for a run and did not come home. Her family is grieving, and a court will decide what happened on that path. The separate question of how a man with this history ended up working with children belongs to the officials who hired him, and they should answer it in full and in public. Trust in a school is built on checks, not assumptions.