Former NYPD officer charged with Brooklyn jogger's murder

A former New York City police officer has been charged with the murder of a Brooklyn jogger who was stabbed in the neck along a waterfront running path. Sayed Mohassib, 27, was charged on Saturday with second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon over the October 30 killing of Katie Suarez, a 28-year-old TD Bank teller who was training for an upcoming race.

Suarez was following her usual route along the Shore Parkway Greenway near her home when she was attacked. She had told her father by phone at 7:56 p.m. that she was about half a mile from meeting him; when she never arrived, he went looking and found her unconscious beneath a tree at 8:16 p.m. She was declared brain dead and kept on life support so her organs could be donated, and died three days later.

Mohassib's path through the city's institutions is documented. He worked as a paraprofessional for the Department of Education, joined the NYPD in 2022 and lasted about six weeks before leaving to enlist in the Marines, according to the New York Post. The military discharged him after finding him psychologically unfit for service. The police department declined to take him back, and the education department returned him to PS 200 in Bensonhurst — an elementary school blocks from the waterfront where Suarez was killed. At the time of his arrest he was employed there as a school aide.

Investigators traced him through surveillance footage that allegedly shows him leaving the park around the time of the attack. He told investigators he has no memory of it but woke up covered in blood and holding a knife, police sources told the Post. Police believe he disposed of the weapon in the garbage, which was hauled to a Staten Island landfill and then a dump in New Jersey. He attended Brooklyn College during the same years as Suarez; investigators have not established whether the two knew each other, and police believe the attack was random.

In the days after the stabbing, Mohassib kept going to work at the school. Colleagues grew concerned enough about his erratic behavior and incoherent speech to alert police — reports that, according to the Post, were not what led investigators to him.