Police officers on October 7, at the Jay Street-MetroTech subway station in downtown Brooklyn, where a 64-year-old man was fatally beaten, according to the police. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
A commuter at a Brooklyn subway station watched on Tuesday afternoon local time as a fare evader tried to open an emergency exit that led to the trains.
The commuter, Nicola Tanzi, 64, motioned to the man to yank harder on the door.
The gesture would be Tanzi’s last.
The fare evader pulled Tanzi to the ground, kicked him in the head repeatedly, then picked him up before dropping him on the floor of the station, an episode captured on surveillance video reviewed by the New York Times.
Then the attacker slipped underneath a turnstile and boarded the subway carrying a backpack and a nunchaku, a martial arts weapon, according to the video and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.
Soon afterwards, officers arrived at the subway station, Jay Street-MetroTech, a busy transit hub in downtown Brooklyn, where they found Tanzi unconscious and with serious head injuries, police said.
He later died at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.
On Wednesday, officers in Times Square arrested David Mazariegos, 25, in the killing.
He had a nunchaku in his backpack and a samurai sword, the official said. It was not clear whether he was carrying the sword at the time of the attack.
Mazariegos was charged in Brooklyn Criminal Court with first- and second-degree murder, robbery and possession of a stolen credit card, according to court records.
Today, the family, friends and neighbours of Tanzi said he was the youngest of six brothers, a devout Catholic who was raised in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and lived in the borough’s Bensonhurst neighbourhood.
“He loved his family,” Patricia Tanzi, his sister-in-law, said. “He was a joy to be around.”
Tanzi used to work at the World Trade Centre and survived both attacks there, the 1993 bombing and the September 11, 2001, attacks, she and her son, Christopher Tanzi, said.
Killings in the city’s transit system are rare.
Three people were killed in the subways from January 1 to October 5 this year, compared with eight people during the same time period last year, according to the most recently available police data.
This killing appeared to be the kind of random attack on a stranger that heightens public fear of subway violence.
Mazariegos had a long criminal history, according to police records.
On June 21, he was arrested and charged in the Bronx with defacing a subway carriage with graffiti, the records show. Three days later, he assaulted an employee at SVA Theatre in the Chelsea neighbourhood of Manhattan, the records show.
The employee, Mario Sacripante, 66, was working when he saw Mazariegos standing at a beverage table before he rushed towards the exit and kicked open the theatre’s glass doors.
Sacripante followed. “I peeped out, I looked at him, and he punched me,” he said.
Mazariegos broke Sacripante’s glasses and injured his nose, then fled, according to police records and Sacripante’s account of the encounter.
About a week later, on July 2, Mazariegos was arrested in Harlem on charges of jumping a turnstile at the West 116th Street-Lenox Avenue subway station.
The next day, he was arraigned in the assault on Sacripante and pleaded not guilty, according to court records. Mazariegos posted bail and was released.
Upon learning that Mazariegos had been released from custody, Sacripante said he thought to himself: “The next person will not be so lucky”.
Mazariegos was arrested again July 24, this time for climbing on cars and jumping on the hoods of the vehicles, according to the records.
On September 26, less than two weeks before the fatal beating of Tanzi, Mazariegos was charged with stealing US$7 from a bodega’s tip jar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, according to witnesses and police records.
Maximo Martinez, 46, a deli chef at Alan’s Marketplace on Columbus Avenue, was behind the counter when Mazariegos grabbed two soft drinks from the refrigerator and proceeded to leave.
When Martinez called after him, Mazariegos slammed the drinks on the counter, Martinez said. He then reached into the tip jar, took the money and fled.
John Jay Santiago, a boxing coach at El Maestro Boxing Gym in the Bronx, said he met Mazariegos this spring in Beyond Boxing, a rehabilitation programme.
When he graduated from the programme after about six weeks, he put on one of the best student presentations, according to Santiago, a counsellor in the programme.
“He said boxing helped him out a lot. But he still was going through struggles,” Santiago said of Mazariegos. “He still had anger issues.”
He would bring his drawings — often colourful with characters from animated shows — to the gym. “He was living in the street. He was always in Times Square, promoting his drawings,” Santiago said.
Tanzi, who worked as a security guard in recent years, was looking forward to retirement, according to his nephew, Christopher Tanzi.
He said his uncle, who was working as an IT technician in the Trade Centre on 9/11, “always carried that burden, but he never really spoke about it”.
During the week, Tanzi had his routine: He would buy an espresso, then visit his friend, Carmine Arcaro, 71, at his shop Flowers by Emil in Bensonhurst.
On Sundays, Tanzi would attend Mass at St Athanasius-St Dominic’s Parish in the neighbourhood, according to Anthony Mammoloti, a deacon at the church.
“He would always greet all the Italian ladies with a ‘Buongiorno, come stai?’” Mammoloti said.
“I know that if Nicola had survived his attack, he’d be the first one to forgive his assailant,” Mammoloti added of Tanzi. “That’s just who he was.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Chelsia Rose Marcius, Miles G. Cohen, Olivia Bensimon and Camille Baker
Photographs by: Dakota Santiago
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