Parolee fatally stabs Columbia student, knifes second victim before his arrest in Central Park, NY police say
NEW YORK — A gang member fatally stabbed a Columbia University teaching assistant during a random late-night Manhattan crime spree in which he also plunged a knife into a second man and terrorized a couple walking in Central Park, authorities said Friday.
Vincent Pinkney, on parole for a gang assault conviction and the owner of a long rap sheet, cried out in joy after the second Thursday night stabbing of a man walking along Columbus Avenue near West 110th Street, a witness told the Daily News.
Police sources indicated the attacker, arrested in the Manhattan park after the last attack, belonged to the Queens-based EBK gang, an acronym for “Everybody Killas.”
“He was ecstatic,” said a Columbia student who witnessed the second unprovoked attack shortly after the suspect fatally stabbed Davide Giri, 30, in the stomach. The victim was targeted as he walked home from a late-night soccer practice in a park in Harlem.
Stunned eyewitnesses called 911 after the bleeding Giri, targeted for no apparent reason, stumbled out of the park at 11:09 pm., police said.
The victim, who had come to the university from Italy, was pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at the school, where he also served as a teaching assistant and a project mentor after arriving as a graduate research assistant in January 2016, according to his online bio.
“The worst part is the family,” said a distraught woman outside Giri’s address. “And they’re going to say the problem was the city. At 11 p.m., you should be able to come back from soccer practice.”
His teammates at NY International FC remembered Giri as “a pillar of the club ... A lion never dies, he sleeps.”
The assailant, after the killing, headed south through Morningside Park in search of more targets, police said.
When the suspect reached West 110th Street and Columbus Avenue, near a pizzeria, he ran up behind second victim Robert Malastina, 27, before plunging the knife into the man’s back and then his chest.
“Why? Why? Help me!” Malastina cried, according to the Columbia student who witnessed the crime from across the street.
“He tried to get up, and I told him to stay down,” the student said.
Police soon arrived, with the victim taken away in an ambulance as the suspect bolted to nearby Central Park — where the assailant tried to stab a 29-year-old man walking with his girlfriend, police said. The man fought him off, with a screaming match ensuing before the suspect fled, sources said.
The man called police, who nabbed the suspect a short distance away. Pinkney, 25, of Manhattan, was previously arrested 16 times with multiple charges of robbery and assault, according to law enforcement sources, and was on parole for the Queens conviction that landed him behind bars for four years.
The victim in the 2013 beatdown was attacked by Pinkney and four other men, and he took 25 stitches to close a cut on the face and 20 staples for a gash to his head.
Two years ago, Columbia student Tessa Majors, 18, was fatally stabbed on a staircase in Morningside Park. The latest violence left students worried about security at the Ivy League campus.
“I’m scared to death,” said freshman Michael Lubash, 23, who lived in the same building as Giri. “I don’t know what to do. We pay so much tuition. Where are the police, the security?”
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(The Daily News' Shant Shahrigian contributed to this story.)
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