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Mingdong CHEN

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Chen confessed that he went on the rampage because he envied the family’s income and lifestyle
Number of victims: 5
Date of murders: October 26, 2013
Date of arrest: Same day
Date of birth: 1988
Victims profile: Qiao Zhen Li, 37, and her children — Linda Zhuo, 9; Amy Zhuo, 7; Kevin Zhuo, 5; and William Zhuo, 1
Method of murder: Stabbing with a kitchen knife
Location: Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Status: Judge ordered Mr. Chen held without bail
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Jealous Chinese immigrant who 'killed cousin's wife and four kids' in Brooklyn was shunned by family for gambling and drugs

  • Mingdong Chen, 25, had a tendency to gamble at illegal parlors and do drugs, which caused a rift in the family, his friend said

  • Tony Chen, 37, said he bumped into the younger Chen on Friday afternoon and chatted but 'he was agitated'

  • Mingdong Chen was arraigned on five counts of murder on Monday and did not enter a plea

  • The one-year-old victim was reportedly decapitated

  • The suspect had only been staying with the family for a week

  • Victim Qiao Zhen had made numerous failed attempts to warn her husband that Chen was acting strangely before calling her mother-in-law in China

DailyMail.co.uk

October 29, 2013

The man accused of butchering his cousin's wife and four children on Saturday night was a family outcast who spent his unemployed days gambling and smoking marijuana, a friend of the suspect has revealed.

According to Tony Chen, 37, who has known Mingdong Chen for several years, the 25-year-old was often agitated and when he played the electronic gambling machines at illegal parlors he'd pound his hand against it angrily if he lost.

His wayward behavior had caused something of a rift between the young man and his family who disproved of his tendency to 'gamble and smoke marijuana,' Tony Chen said.

Tony Chen last saw his friend on Friday afternoon when they ran into each other on 57th Street and chatted, the man told The New York Times.

'He seemed agitated,' he said. 'In recent days, he didn't have so much money.'

The new details about the alleged killer's character comes as it's revealed his first words when he opened the door to his cousin's sister and her husband after the attack were, 'I know I am done.'

Chen, who has flitted between Chicago and New York since arriving in the U.S. in 2004, was arraigned on Monday for the grim killings.

He said nothing as he was charged with five counts of murder for the deaths of the four children — Linda Zhuo, 9; Amy Zhuo, 7; Kevin Zhuo, 5; and William Zhuo, 1 — and their mother, Qiao Zhen Li, 37, who died from cuts to the neck.

He was also charged with assaulting a police officer while being questioned at a precinct after the grisly killings on Saturday evening.

Judge Jane Tully ordered him held without bail.

Meanwhile on Monday, Public School 105, where three of the Zhou children had been students, mourned the weekend's shocking events that took place only blocks away.

'It is with great sadness that I must inform you that three of our students have passed away,' Johanna Castronovo, the school principal, wrote in a letter to parents on Monday, in English and Chinese, according to The Times.

'In school, our staff members are working already with the children to provide them with information and to help them express the pain and sadness they might be experiencing.'

A classmate of fourth-grade Linda described her friend as a 'kind and helpful student.'

'She always shares things with other people,' the friend said. 'When I need pencils, she lets me use her pencils.'

Wearing over-sized blue sweats with his hair disheveled, Chen was quiet in the Brooklyn Criminal Court Monday as he heard the charges against him without entering a plea.

His attorney, Danielle Eaddy, said her client had been injured while in police custody and appeared to have two bruises on his forehead. She did not immediately request a psychiatric hearing.

Chen's next court date was set for Friday, where a grand jury is expected to determine whether to indict him in the gruesome deaths.

Police said Chen stabbed and slashed the victims in their necks and torsos. The one-year-old boy was so badly butchered that he was decapitated, according to reports.

The family was found in various rooms in their apartment on the first floor of a two-story brick house. Some were hospitalized and pronounced dead; others died at the scene.

'It's a scene you'll never forget,' said Chief of Department Philip Banks III.

The children's father and Chen's cousin, Yi Lin Zhuo, was working at a Long Island restaurant when the grisly murders unfolded in his home.

The mother tried to call him because she was alarmed about Chen's behavior earlier in the evening, police said - but she was unable to get through to him.

She then called her mother-in-law in China who reached out to her daughter in the same Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park, asking her and her husband to drop by the house.

When they went to check, they allegedly found Chen with a knife and dripping in blood amid the carnage.

The children's father learned the horrifying news though a police interpreter of Chinese.

'The father was freaking out,' May Chan, a neighbor, told the New York Daily News. 'He just came home from work and saw the police and they told him. He was hysterical.

'I always see (the kids) running around here,' he added. 'They run around by my garage playing. They run up and down screaming. They're little kids ... that's so heartbreaking. Innocent kids, my God.'

Chen had been staying with the family for about a week. He was a transient and illegally in the United States, Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale said. An immigration hold was also placed on him.

Police said Chen apparently was envious of fellow immigrants' successes in America.

'He made a very soft comment that since he came to this country, everybody seems to be doing better than him,' Banks said Sunday.

Chen was unemployed after being fired from a string of restaurant jobs he held for just a few weeks at a time, according to neighbors and relatives in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood.

Neighbors also said that days before the brutal killings, loud, late-night arguments could be heard from the street.

Chen remained 'bizarrely calm' as he was dragged past his family's corpses and during his confession to police in which he said he was jealous of his victims' money.

He was taken barefoot, his feet caked in blood, from the home in handcuffs by police.

'The family had too much. Their income (and) lifestyle was better than his,' a source told the New York Post.

The family did not appear to be better-off than those who lived around them in the working-class Chinese neighborhood near Ninth Avenue in Brooklyn.

They sent their three school-age children to a local public school, according to the Education Department and Li stayed at home with William.

 
 

‘He is coming with the knife’: Mom’s last words

By Kevin Sheehan, Kirstan Conley and Bruce Golding - NYPost.com

October 29, 2013

“He is coming with the knife.”

Those were the terrified last words of the Brooklyn mom who was butchered along with her four kids on Saturday, The Post has learned.

The bloody slaughter erupted after mother Qiaozhen Li screamed at the accused killer for hitting one of her children, according to a chilling account obtained exclusively on Tuesday.

Murder defendant Mingdong Chen “was getting into arguments with the children on Saturday,” said a housemate of Li’s sister-in-law.

“Then he hit one of the children and (Li) shouted at (Chen) and that is when he got really angry,” the woman said through a Chinese interpreter.

The frightened mom tried in vain to call her husband and other relatives in the area before finally contacting her mother-in-law in China.

“When she called the mother in China, she told her what was happening, and when she said, ‘He is coming with the knife,’ the phone went silent,” the housemate of Li’s sister-in-law said.

The mother-in-law then called her daughter, who raced with her husband to the Sunset Park apartment.

“When she got to the house, three were dead already. Two were still alive,” the elderly housemate of Li’s sister-in-law said.

“She was so scared. She was scared to death. She didn’t know what to do, so she called the police.”

The woman’s account echoes the official version of the killings that cops have previously provided — but adds new details about the argument and desperate phone call that preceded the Saturday night massacre, which took place while the victims’ husband and father, Yi Lin Zhuo, was at work.

Chen — a transient who is a cousin of Zhuo’s — had been staying in the family’s Sunset Park apartment for about a week before he allegedly used a butcher knife to commit the grisly killings.

Sources have said two of the children were decapitated — including a baby boy — and that the mother had several fingers chopped off as she tried to protect herself.

Chen, 25, confessed that he went on the rampage because he envied the family’s income and lifestyle.

Also Tuesday, sources told The Post that Chen has been dodging deportation since June 17, when a federal immigration judge in Chicago ordered him removed from the US.

In 2004, Chen arrived in the country as an unaccompanied minor and applied for asylum as soon as his plane landed, but his application and a series of appeals were all denied, the sources said.

In a statement, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Chen became an “immigration fugitive” after “absconding” from Chicago, his last known address.

“ICE had no information about his whereabouts until his most recent arrest in New York,” ICE said.

“ICE has lodged a detainer against Mr. Chen. After the full adjudication of the current pending criminal charges — to include a conviction and any potential prison sentence — Chen will be remanded to ICE custody for removal from the country.

The woman who spoke to The Post said she learned about the incident on Sunday morning from the dead mom’s sister-in-law.

She said the sister-in-law and her husband began renting the lower half of the house where she lives after moving to the US in September and answering a classified ad in a Chinese-language newspaper.

Because of the murders, the landlord no longer wants to rent to the sister-in-law and her husband, she added.

The woman refused to give her name, saying she fears being deported because she — like everyone else tied to the case — is an illegal immigrant.

Meanwhile, the grieving widower and father of the victims returned Tuesday morning to the scene of the slayings, where he was overheard making funeral arrangements for his wife, 37, and kids: Linda, 9; Amy, 7; Kevin, 5; and William, 1.

Zhuo, who works as a cook, then ran from the apartment with two community-affairs cops and a young man and a woman.

The group hopped into an unmarked police car and drove off.

Inside the building, a shoe rack outside the apartment door held children’s little pink sneakers.

The floors inside the apartment were covered in dried blood, and a sign on the wall outside the door ironically reads “Safe outside and in” in Chinese, with cartoon figures of four kids over the Chinese characters.

Three families who lived in other apartments inside the brick row house at 870 57th St. were in the process of moving out.

“We live upstairs. We are scared. How can we not be scared?” one woman said in Chinese.

“No good to stay. Everyone knows death is here.”

Additional reporting by Charlotte Fu

 
 

Stabbing Suspect Silent; Grieving Goes On

By Julie Turkewitz and J. David Goodman - The New York Times

October 28, 2013

His dark hair spiked and his gaze fixed, Mingdong Chen appeared in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday, saying nothing as he was charged with five counts of murder in the stabbing deaths of his cousin’s wife and her four young children. But the reverberations of the tragedy could be keenly heard in Sunset Park, by the family’s home and at an elementary school, suddenly confronted with the deaths of three of its students.

In a criminal complaint released after the arraignment, prosecutors provided a chilling, if brief, description of the brutality of the crime Mr. Chen is accused of committing, saying each of the four children — Linda Zhuo, 9; Amy Zhuo, 7; Kevin Zhuo, 5; and William Zhuo, 1 — and their mother, Qiao Zhen Li, 37, died from cuts to the neck.

The father’s sister and her husband were the first to arrive at the house Saturday night, finding Mr. Chen amid the fallen bodies, covered in blood. “I know I am done,” he said, according to the complaint.

Judge Jane Tully ordered Mr. Chen, 25, held without bail.

An assistant district attorney, Mark Hale, described Mr. Chen as a “transient” and an “undocumented alien.” The police said Mr. Chen struggled to find a steady life in the United States. He bounced between Chinese neighborhoods in New York and Chicago before returning to the city a little more than a week ago to stay with his cousin in Sunset Park — the father of the children he is accused of killing.

At Public School 105, where three of the children had been students, administrators provided counseling and tried to ease the shock among students and teachers over the killings only blocks away, as well as help parents guide children at home.

“It is with great sadness that I must inform you that three of our students have passed away,” wrote Johanna Castronovo, the school principal, in a letter to parents on Monday, in English and Chinese. “In school, our staff members are working already with the children to provide them with information and to help them express the pain and sadness they might be experiencing.”

In a fourth-grade classroom where Linda would have been on Monday, classmates gathered to create a memory wall dedicated to the little girl. “It’s a big wall, and then we write the things that Linda did to us,” explained a 9-year-old classmate. The students brainstormed together, and then plastered messages across one large area, she said.

“She’s a kind and helpful student,” said the student, remembering her friend. “She always shares things with other people. When I need pencils, she lets me use her pencils.”

After school, students streamed out of the school, on 59th Street in Sunset Park, a five-minute walk from the scene of the tragedy.

Police officials said Mr. Chen harbored resentment over his difficulties, but it was not clear what caused him to lash out against his relatives, most hailing from the Fujian province in eastern China. He had no arrests in New York or Chicago.

Mr. Chen had been a regular presence at employment agencies in Manhattan’s Chinatown during past stays in New York, said a friend of several years, Tony Chen, 37. The two passed the time gambling together in illegal parlors with electronic gambling machines, he said.

He said that Mr. Chen was the kind of person who was often agitated, pounding his hand against the electronic machines when he lost, and that Mr. Chen would occasionally use drugs while they were together. He added that Mr. Chen’s family disapproved of him because of his tendency to “gamble and smoke marijuana.”

Mr. Chen also faces charges of assaulting two police officers who acted as interpreters during his interrogation.

At his arraignment, a lawyer appointed to Mr. Chen, Danielle V. Eaddy, pointed to two marks on Mr. Chen’s forehead, calling them “good-size bruises that I believe happened while he was in custody.”

She did not elaborate further, or discuss the killings, and declined to comment after the proceeding.

None of Mr. Chen’s relatives appeared to have attended the proceeding. The last time Tony Chen said he saw his friend was at 4 p.m. on Friday; they ran into each other on 57th Street, said hello, and chatted.

“He seemed agitated,” Tony Chen said. “In recent days, he didn’t have so much money.”

Jeffrey E. Singer contributed reporting.

 
 

Mingdong Chen Arrested For Murders Of Mother, Four Children; Police Describe Gruesome Stabbings

By Verena Dobnik - HuffingtonPost.com

October 28,  2013

NEW YORK (AP) — When relatives of a Chinese immigrant mother of four young children banged on the family's door, it opened to a grisly sight: a man dripping with blood who is now charged with stabbing the five to death with a butcher knife.

Mingdong Chen, 25, faced five counts of murder Sunday, a day after the brutal killings of his cousin's wife and her four children in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood.

Two girls, 9-year-old Linda Zhuo and 7-year-old Amy Zhuo, were pronounced dead at the scene, along with the youngest child, 18-month-old William Zhuo — all found in a back bedroom, police said. Their brother, 5-year-old Kevin Zhuo, and 37-year-old mother, Qiao Zhen Li, were found in the kitchen and taken to hospitals, where they also were pronounced dead.

The five "were cut and butchered with a kitchen knife," said Chief of Department Philip Banks III, the New York Police Department's highest-ranking uniformed member.

The victims died of stab wounds to their necks and torsos, and Chen has implicated himself in the killings, Banks said.

"It's a scene you'll never forget," he said.

Chen had been staying with the family on the first floor of the two-story brick house for about a week.

He was unemployed after being fired from a string of restaurant jobs he held for just a few weeks at a time, according to neighbors and relatives in the working-class neighborhood dominated by a large community of immigrants from China.

Almost a decade after coming to the United States as a teenager, he still was fluent only in Mandarin Chinese, Banks said.

"He was bouncing around," said Banks.

Chen apparently was jealous of fellow immigrants' successes in America.

"He made a very soft comment that since he came to this country, everybody seems to be doing better than him," Banks said.

The children's father, his cousin, was not home late Saturday evening; he was working at a Long Island restaurant, one neighbor said.

The mother tried to call him because she was alarmed about Chen's "suspicious" behavior earlier in the evening, Banks said.

When she couldn't reach her husband, Li called her mother-in-law in China, who also could not immediately reach her son. The mother-in-law then reached out to her daughter in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, Banks said.

The sister-in-law and her husband went to the house at about 11 p.m. and kept banging on the door till someone answered, police said.

It was Chen, "and they see that he's covered with blood," Banks said. "They don't know who this person is."

The couple fled, called 911, and detectives investigating another matter nearby responded quickly, Banks said.

Yuan Gao, a cousin of the mother, came by the house Sunday and stood on the tree-lined street with well-tended row houses, half a block from the neighborhood thoroughfare, its open air markets, Chinese restaurants and shops bustling with Sunday morning shoppers. Many walked over to the house, milling around and discussing the most horrible crime they could remember.

But almost none spoke English, and the few who did remained tight-lipped.

Some said that at Chen's last temporary home, days before the killings, late-night arguments were loud enough to be heard outside.

Gao said he had moved to the area recently and was staying with whoever would take him for brief periods of time.

Bob Madden, who lives a block away, was walking his dog on Saturday night when he saw the young man being taken away in a police cruiser.

"He was barefoot, wearing dungarees, and he was staring, he was expressionless," Madden said.

The suspect was in custody Sunday, but is still awaiting arraignment. It was unclear whether he had an attorney.

Banks said Chen had at first resisted arrest and, while being processed, assaulted a police officer.

Neighbor May Chan told the Daily News it was "heartbreaking" to learn of the deaths of children she often saw running around and playing.

"They run around by my garage playing. They run up and down screaming," Chan said.

"The father was freaking out," she said. "He just came home from work and saw the police and they told him. He was hysterical."

 
 

Before Carnage, Frantic Warnings of Relative’s Odd Behavior

By J. David Goodman - The New York Times

October 27, 2013

The phone calls came in rapid succession, each call more frantic than the last, made by a woman intent on warning her relatives that her husband’s 25-year-old cousin, who had been staying with their family only a few days, was not acting right.

By the time the woman could get any of her family members to stop by her home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on Saturday, it was too late. Inside the apartment, the woman, Qiao Zhen Li, lay unconscious in the kitchen, next to her 5-year-old son, Kevin Zhuo; both were mortally wounded. The bodies of her three other children, all stabbed to death, were in a rear bedroom.

“They bang on the door and they bang on the door,” Chief Philip Banks III, the Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, said of Ms. Li’s relatives. When they finally got inside on Saturday night, they came upon the carnage, and the man believed to be responsible, Chen Mingdong, covered in blood.

Mr. Chen, the cousin, was charged on Sunday with five counts of murder. He was also charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest; the authorities said he had attacked an officer in the 66th Precinct station house while his arrest was being processed.

The killings tore through the family like a fire: sudden and complete. The five murders in the three-room home on 57th Street, where the children and their parents enjoyed a seemingly ordinary life, the police said, stood out for their brutality and magnitude.

It was “not something that has been seen before in recent memory,” said John J. McCarthy, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

Chief Banks said the scene was one that was seared into memory. He called the crime an “unspeakable act” visited upon a “normal family.”

That very New York normality appeared to grate on Mr. Chen, who lived an impoverished and itinerant life between Chinatown in Manhattan, Chicago and most recently, his cousin’s home in Sunset Park.

Under interrogation by detectives, conducted in Mandarin, he told of his disillusionment with life since coming to the United States in 2004 and of his jealousy toward those who had found success here. The police listed him as unemployed.

But it remained unclear what prompted him to turn his rage on his cousin’s wife, Ms. Li, 37, and their four children, identified by the police as Linda Zhuo, 9; Amy Zhuo, 7; Kevin; and William Zhuo, 1.

The police said Mr. Chen appeared to have stayed with them before without incident. The family did not appear to be better-off than those who lived around them in their Chinese enclave near Ninth Avenue in Brooklyn, neighbors said. They sent their three school-age children to a local public school, the Education Department said. Ms. Li stayed at home with William. The authorities had no record of troubles in the household.

May Chee, who is a neighbor of the family and grew up on the block, said she would often see Ms. Li outside with her children, who would chase one another and play with the other children who live along 57th Street, a block teeming with young people.

Ms. Li watched over them from her front stoop, often chatting on her cellphone, said Ms. Chee, who added that the mother did not speak much English.

Few in the area recalled Mr. Chen, who had only recently arrived there.

A woman who lives next to the family and gave her name only as Ms. Zheng said she had seen the cousin in recent days standing outside the two-story, two-family home, smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone.

A cousin of the mother, Yun Gao, 29, told reporters near the home on Sunday that Mr. Chen was emotionally unstable; she did not elaborate.

The only weapon used in the killings, the police said, was a large kitchen knife, described by the authorities as a meat cleaver. Chief Banks said that the bodies “were cut and butchered” and that most of the wounds were to the neck and torso.

Ms. Chee said she saw the children’s father, Yi Lin Zhuo, 31, arrive after the police cars on Saturday night. “He was crying,” she said. “He was screaming.”

Two women arrived with him, one of them weeping.

“It’s so sad,” Ms. Chee said. “The only thing I can do is pray for them, pray for the family. It’s crazy. You don’t kill kids. Don’t take it out on the kids.”

The nature of the attack, using a kitchen implement, pointed to spontaneity, and the number killed surprised even veteran investigators.

“I just can’t think of anything like that,” said Vernon J. Geberth, a retired homicide commander who dealt with thousands of murder investigations. “I’m going to call it a family annihilation, because that would be the technical term that you’d use, and most involve firearms.”

It was a gun that was used by an Amityville, N.Y., man in 1974 to kill his parents, two brothers and two sisters in their home. Similarly, John E. List, a New Jersey accountant, shot his wife, mother and three teenage children to death in 1971.

But in terms of mass family killings using a knife, “we just don’t have any history of that,” Mr. Geberth said. Multiple stabbing deaths are uncommon in general because people have time to escape, he added, though children are often the victims because they are less able to do so.

Indeed, the killings recalled the stabbing deaths on the Upper West Side last year of two children, 6 and 2; the police arrested the family’s nanny, who was said to have harbored anger over her treatment by the children’s parents.

It was not clear what may have precipitated the killings in the Sunset Park apartment or what caused Ms. Li to become alarmed.

Mr. Chen had no prior arrests in New York, the police said, and did not appear to have had trouble with the law in Chicago. Investigators believe that Mr. Chen, who does not speak English, has not left the United States since arriving here nearly 10 years ago.

During the interrogation, Mr. Chen spoke in general of feelings of resentment, the police said.

“He made a very soft comment that since he’s been in this country, everyone seems to be doing better than him,” Chief Banks said.

“We’re not really sure what that means,” he added. “But that is the only thing that we have now. We’re still looking into it.”

Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Mei-Yu Liu and Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.

 
 

Brooklyn stabbing suspect did it because his life was miserable: cops

Mingdong Chen allegedly became angry when his relatives tried to kick him out of her Sunset Park apartment. He had been 'bouncing around' and was out of work prior to the killings.

By Rocco Parascandola, Edgar Sandoval, Simone Weichselbaum and Tina Moore / New York Daily News

Sunday, October 27, 2013

He hated his life — so he took theirs.

A 25-year-old transient from China slaughtered his cousin’s wife and four children with a meat cleaver because he was envious of what they had, a police source said.

A seething Mingdong Chen revealed his chilling motive in a remorseless confession to cops about Saturday night’s bloody Brooklyn massacre, the source said Sunday.

“He felt they had everything and that he had nothing. They were doing well and he was struggling just to get by,” the source said.

The suspect’s rage was still boiling over at the precinct, where he punched one police officer in the chest and threw a pair of glasses at another, according to police.

Qiao Zhen Li, 37, and her children — Linda Zhuo, 9; Amy Zhuo, 7; Kevin Zhuo, 5; and William Zhuo, 1 — were killed in the horrific Sunset Park attack.

Chen, who speaks no English and talked to cops through a Mandarin translator, was charged with five counts of both first-degree murder and second-degree murder and with assaulting a police officer, cops said.

He left the 66th Precinct stationhouse flanked by police Sunday night with his head held up, showing no emotion.

The mayhem unfolded at the apartment on 57th St. near Ninth Ave. while the father of the family was out.

The mother, Li, tried to call her husband Yi Lin Zhuo, 31, to voice fears about Chen’s behavior but couldn’t reach him, cops said. She then called his mother in China, who called a daughter-in-law in Brooklyn.

The daughter-in-law and her husband went to the flat to check on the family.

“They bang on the door,” NYPD Chief of Department Philip Banks said. “At some point, he opens the door and they see that he is covered with blood.”

The family members called 911 from the blood-spattered scene around 10:45 p.m. and detectives arrested Chen at the home.

The bodies of the mom and her 5-year-old son were found in the kitchen, where cops also found the weapon. The three other children were found dead in a back bedroom.

All of the victims had wounds to their necks, a police source said.

Xiaowe Yang, 31, said she spoke to a cousin of Li’s, who told her the mother recently tried to kick her husband’s cousin out of the house.

“She told him to go home,” Yang said. “The guy is very poor. He had no home. He had no place to live when he came to New York. She told him, ‘You just leave my house.’ ”

Chen had been “bouncing around” and had only been staying with the family for eight to 10 days, Banks said.

He came to the United States in 2004, and his last known address was in Chicago, police said.

Family members were overwhelmed with grief.

“He’s crazy,” Gao Yun, 29, who identified herself as Li’s cousin, said through a translator. “He came here illegally from China. He was living with them. He’s not stable.”

Yun said the man had a job at a restaurant out of state about two weeks ago until he was fired.

Neighbor Amy Chang, 15, said she heard the sirens and ran out to see first responders trying to save the little boy.

“He was wearing yellow pajamas,” she said. “He was bloody. They were trying to help him. But he wasn’t moving . . . to kill a kid, it’s the worst.”

Chen, who had no criminal record in New York, has stayed in various places throughout the city since coming to the country and may have stayed with the family before, cops said.

 

 

 
 
 
 
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