Christina Yuna Lee was a 35-year-old woman living in Chinatown in New York City. She worked as a creative director for a music platform called Splice. Early Sunday morning, around 4:30 am Lee was returning home to her 6th floor apartment when 25-year-old Assamad Nash began following her. Nash caught the front door of her apartment building before it closed and followed Lee inside and all the way up to the 6th floor. When she opened her apartment he pushed his way in and grabbed one of her kitchen knives. One of Lee’s neighbors was awoken by her screams for help.

One of Yuna Lee’s sixth-floor neighbors who called 911 recalled the victim’s desperate pleas for help.

“She was calling for help, screaming for help. I woke up to it. It was awful,” the 21-year-old neighbor said. “‘Help me! Call 911!’ — that’s exactly what she said over and over and over again.”…

One neighbor who heard the victim’s screams called them “horrifying.”

The NY Times reported that it took police a long time to get into the apartment:

Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the district, called the details of the attack a “worst nightmare scenario.”

“She was still screaming and fighting for her life, and they weren’t able to get to her for almost an hour and a half,” Ms. Niou said.

The delay was apparently the result of responding officers being unable to get through Lee’s steel front door. They tried to break it down, including with a sledgehammer but weren’t able to get in. When special operations officers eventually arrived and opened the door they found Lee dead in her own bathtub, stabbed multiple times. A police officer saw Nash trying to flee via the fire escape but police eventually found him hiding under Lee’s bed, covered in her blood. It’s not clear why the cops couldn’t also go through the window Nash tried to escape from.

Nash is homeless and has been arrested multiple times in the past several months, including twice for assault. He has no apparent connection to Lee.

Nash has three open cases in Manhattan dating to last year, including 27 counts of criminal mischief from an arrest last month, and two busts from last year for possession of stolen property and assault.

In the assault case, Nash is accused of slugging a straphanger in the right eye at the Grand Street station on Sept. 28 while the victim was swiping a MetroCard for a woman, sources said.

Naturally, Nash was released without bail after the assault. He was later arrested on a warrant but was released again. And the NY Post reports he was also arrested last May and charged with assaulting a woman but that case was sealed for reasons that aren’t clear. A member of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association said Lee’s only mistake was to move from New Jersey to New York City, something she’d done relatively recently:

“She has done nothing wrong. Only mistake she made, was to move to New York City… but our city allowed her life to be taken away by violence,” said Justin Yu, president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. “Crime has no consequence in this city.”

“Today, we are mourning, we are crying, we are trembling in fear. We are terrified. Do something New York City!” Yu said.

Mayor Eric Adams called the murder horrific.

This is the definition of horrific. @NYPDNews is investigating this incident and we stand with our Asian community today.

The suspect is in custody, but the conditions that created him remain. The mission of this administration is clear: We won’t let this violence go unchecked. https://t.co/j8BiV6fDRe

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) February 13, 2022

Maybe Nash is schizophrenic or maybe he’s a drug addict who has destroyed his own mind. Either way a man with five previous felony arrests and three pending cases shouldn’t have been on the streets. As the landlord for Lee’s building told NBC 4 in New York, “This was all avoidable.”

Christina Yuna Lee was a digital producer @splice. She was 35 y.o. Korean-American and a graduate of @RutgersU. She lived in a 6 story walk-up in Chinatown. On Sunday morning, a stranger followed her home and murdered her. May she find rest. May her family & friends find comfort. pic.twitter.com/DIPQiFB1nL

— Min Jin Lee (@minjinlee11) February 14, 2022