Police announced charges on Friday morning for six people arrested in connection with a stabbing at the Randall’s Island migrant shelter on Thursday afternoon — the same facility where a man was fatally stabbed in another incident earlier this month.
NYPD officials said a verbal argument escalated into physical violence at the shelter around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. When officers arrived, they found a 24-year-old man with a stab wound to his neck.
The victim was taken to Harlem Hospital Center in stable condition, and police arrested a total of 18 people at the scene.
Of those arrested, 12 were later released with criminal court summonses for disorderly conduct, according to the NYPD. The six remaining individuals were charged with various offenses, including assault, menacing, criminal weapons possession, reckless endangerment and tampering with physical evidence.
It’s unclear how the fight began.
All of the suspects are residents of the sprawling tent facility, which is the city’s largest migrant relief center and is capable of housing up to 3,000 new arrivals.
Several migrants living at the facility told Gothamist that Thursday’s incident exacerbated their safety concerns about the shelter, where they said stealing and fights among residents are common.
“We got here Jan. 6, and that same day they had killed somebody,” said Monica Gil, 36, a Colombian migrant who was placed at the shelter with her husband the night 24-year-old Dafren Canizalez was fatally stabbed by another shelter resident. “So tell me, how safe can it be?”
“The few things we have– whatever we leave there, people steal,” said Gil’s husband Esteban Quintero, 32. “People are bored, and there’s no security. People have weapons and everything … you don’t know what people have.”
Quintero, Gil and other migrants who spoke to Gothamist said Thursday’s incident involved a member of security staff, leading them to feel like they can’t even rely on those responsible for…
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