Manhattan subway stabbing suspect said there was lots of blood; victim was feeling at home in NYC
A homeless man accused of stabbing a straphanger to death on a Manhattan train said he tossed the knife into a subway tunnel and trashed his bloody sweatshirt, according to court documents.
Accused killer Claude White was arraigned late Tuesday on second-degree murder charges in the stabbing death of 32-year-old Tavon Silver. The victim was discovered bleeding profusely from numerous stab wounds while seated in a rear car of a Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train at the 14th St.-Union Square station just after 4 a.m. Saturday, cops said.
According to a criminal complaint, Silver was stabbed in the chest, and died from a wound to his heart.
“I was on top of him and I grabbed the knife and I stabbed him and threw the knife into the subway tunnel,” said White, 33, according to a court document. “I threw my sweatshirt out in the trash. “It had a lot of his blood on it.”
Prosecutors said Silver was killed in a dispute over K2, the synthetic marijuana drug, during a sale that went bad.
Paramedics rushed the victim to Bellevue Hospital in Kips Bay, where he died, cops said.
Silver, a Connecticut native, reveled in living in New York City, where he felt more free to live his life as a gay man, according to friends.
“That’s where he found his happiness,” said Amy Walker, 33, a close family friend.
“He changed his whole style. He didn’t want to be the same as everybody else. ‘If this is my style, I’m gonna rock my style,’” she added.
Silver was the victim of a previous hate-fueled slashing last year in the Bronx, where another rider attacked him for playing his music too loud.
After recovering from last year’s attack, Silver continued to embrace life in the big city, but he also developed a newfound respect for the fragility of life, Walker said.
Walker said she still has a message her friend sent to her after the Bronx slashing.
“He sent me a message: ‘There’s so many things going on in the world, it could be any one of us. I just want you to know that I care about you,’” Walker recounted. “It makes you wish that you had an opportunity to call that person more often every day.
“He was so vibrant and full of life,” she added. “How could somebody do something like that to him? Did somebody comfort him? Did he have to die by himself? He comforted everybody, he didn’t deserve that!”