Authorities from the New York Police Department (NYPD) have identified the man who allegedly stabbed a first-year college student to death in the Flairon district of Manhattan, they reported.
Identified as Thierno Bah, 18, is being sought for the murder of Denzel Bimpey, 18, on December 15, who was mistaken for a member of a rival gang and stabbed when he returned home for Christmas. with his family.
Officials released a photo of the suspect on Saturday and asked anyone who saw him to call NYPD Crime Stoppers.
The attacker does not have a criminal record in New York City, but was related to an argument on a bus from Syracuse to the Big Apple in which the victim was involved before the stabbing.
The deceased and his friends were completing their five-hour trip when they confronted another group of university students.
“While in Syracuse, the two groups are involved in a verbal dispute where the perpetrator group begins speaking in gang language and asks our victim’s group, ‘What block are you from?’, and they respond, ‘We’re not in a gang,’” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny explained at a news conference last week.
Officers said Bimpey and his friends also had no prior arrests and did not appear to belong to any criminal group. The victim and her companions were from the Bronx. The other was from Harlem.
“There’s a gang called Six Block that’s fighting with Nine Block,” Kenny said of the fight in Harlem. “We believe our group of victims may have been mistaken for members of Nine Block.”
The dispute did not turn violent until the group got off the bus in the Flaitron district shortly after 10:30 p.m., officials said.
Bimpey and his friends ran down the street with the others in pursuit, according to Kenny. When the young man collapsed on Park Avenue South, the other group stopped following them, ran to a black van and fled, the Daily News reported.
The victim had a pulse right at the scene, where officers found a knife and a box cutter-type weapon, the chief of detectives said. He had puncture wounds to his chest 7 to 8 inches deep, a wound to his right shoulder and a cut to his forearm.
He lost his life at Bellevue Hospital due to his injuries.
Kenny revealed that authorities extensively investigated social media and determined that the group that attacked Bimpey and his friends went to Onondaga Community College, about 10 minutes from SUNY Morrisville, where Bimpey was a student.
They all boarded the bus in Syracuse at the same time as the other young people from the community college, they said.
“This is a common transportation center, where students take buses, the buses stop on the way south,” he said.
School officials identified Bah as a suspect in Bimpey’s death, but the NYPD did not say which educational facility alerted them to his involvement.
So far no arrests have been made.
The victim’s family insisted that he was a neat college student.
“I wasn’t in any gang,” a woman who identified herself as Bimpey’s sister settled on Tuesday. “We don’t live in Harlem.”
Anyone from the public with information on Bah’s whereabouts is asked to call NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
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