A disturbing new video shows the moment when a big-hearted activist and talented poet was stabbed to dea*th in front of his girlfriend in Brooklyn. She desperately tried to get help after the horrific attack.
The surveillance footage shows Ryan Carson, 32, and his girlfriend sitting on a bus stop bench in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Monday just before 4 a.m. as they made their way home from a wedding on Long Island. Carson was talking to his girlfriend.
Carson, who is wearing a grey suit, and the young woman, who is wearing a blue outfit with no sleeves, get up and start walking down the block. They are going in the same direction as a man in a dark sweatshirt who walked by them at the B38 bus stop with his hands in his pockets and his hood up.
The stranger starts kicking scooters parked near the curb for no reason just feet ahead of them, as seen in the video obtained by The Post on Tuesday.
The crazy man then turns to Carson and asks, “What the f–k are you looking at?”
The well-known community activist told the angry stranger that he wasn’t looking at anything, and then he moved in front of his girlfriend and the stranger as he moved towards them.
The crazy person tells Carson, “Chill! Chill!” and holds up his hand. “I’ll ki*ll you!” his threat.
Attacker goes after Carson with a knife, and the victim’s girlfriend can be heard yelling “Please, please, please!” as she runs up behind them.
Carson falls off the bench that the couple was sitting on earlier as he runs.
The attacker then grabs his jacket, throws him to the ground, and brutally stabs him several times in the chest as the victim’s girlfriend follows them.
He then walks away while Carson is curled up on the ground. He comes back and approaches the scared woman, but she raises her hand to stop him.
The sicko spits on her while still holding the knife, then kicks Carson’s body, ki*lling him, and storms off.
In the corner of the frame, an unknown woman yells at the crazy man, “Don’t hurt him!” and keeps saying what sounds like the name “Brian” or “Bryan.”
Police sources said Tuesday that they think the woman and the suspect knew each other before the murder.
The same woman walks up to Carson, who is still lying on the sidewalk, and says, “I’m so sorry!” His worried girlfriend stands next to him.
The victim’s girlfriend tells the woman, “Go watch him,” while pointing at the attacker.
“I’m calling 911,” she says.
The video cuts off as the boyfriend’s girlfriend kneels over him and moves his arm that was hanging over his face in a soft way.
She held her badly hurt boyfriend in her arms before he was rushed to Kings County Hospital Centre, but it was too late. According to police and other sources, the stabbing had gone through his heart.
The terrible attack happened at Lafayette Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard, only a few blocks from the train station at Bedford-Nostrand Avenues, where the couple got off the tube on their way home from the wedding.
The horrible cri*me had not been solved by Tuesday afternoon, but a “Wanted” poster went around with a close-up of the suspect wearing a black “Champion” sweatshirt.
The mur*der wea*pon has not been found by investigators. Sources say the suspect threw it in a pile of trash at first and then quickly went back to get it.
Investigators found two books that Carson’s girlfriend seemed to have been carrying during the violent incident and a pair of glasses that the victim had worn.
Carson moved to New York City from the Boston area in 2010 to go to Pratt Institute. His LinkedIn page says that he was a senior solid waste campaign manager at the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG).
Friends told The Post that he was most active when it came to environmental and sustainability issues.
This morning, NYPIRG released a statement calling Carson “a beloved staffer, colleague and friend, as well as a creative, talented, relentless, and upbeat advocate for students and the environment.”
The company that hired him said, “His engaging personality, hearty laugh, and wide-ranging intelligence were keys to his success in advancing the causes he deeply cared about in his work and personal life.” “Ryan was a true team player who was happy to do the basic “blocking and tackling” that was needed to move an issue forward and win it. He also shone in public as a leader, campaign manager, and spokesperson.”
A flatmate who did not want to be named told The Post that 150 people came to a vigil for Carson in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Monday night.
Someone in the room said on Tuesday, “At the vigil, we asked people, ‘Who here is a better person because of Ryan Carson?'”
“Almost everyone in that crowd put up their hand.”
The flatmate said that as soon as he heard about Carson’s de*ath, his thoughts went to the people who would be hurt by the terrible loss.
“Who should I call?” He asked himself, “How do I tell people?”
He said that the alleged attacker hadn’t been on his mind as much.
“[The suspect] is the least important part of this conversation,” the flatmate said. “I don’t feel angry, and I don’t think that’s good for me.” That doesn’t make me mad.
“It’s amazing how much Carson did for the whole city and for his friends,” Tom Krantz, 31, another flatmate and friend, said Monday.
“He’s really… the centre of a whole community that he built and brought together.”
“I believe people who say he would give the shirt off his back are telling the truth,” the flatmate said.
“He was always going out of his way to be with his friends.”
An old classmate and friend, Alex Harristhal, 29, said that he once walked all the way across New York City “to raise awareness to pass legislation for the institution of the first overdose prevention facility in the state.”
As a published poet, Carson wrote a piece called “Anxiety” in which he talked about his fears about his own death and the “inconvenience” it would cause other people.
In the poem, he said, “That it could come while someone waits for me, that I couldn’t call to let them know I was late.”
Acadia Cutschall, 32, went to Carson’s front porch on Monday to mourn his death. She went to school with him, volunteered with him, and called him her “best friend.”
Cutschall said, “I was there one time when he had a guy stop mugging him.” “He gave him money.”
f Carson had the opportunity, he may have even lent a hand to the man who took his life, according to Cutschall.
“He would probably help out a guy like that,” she said.
