Former NYPD officer Sayed Mohassib told police he was carrying a knife along a Brooklyn bike path because he believed “people were going to come and kill his family,” according to a criminal complaint filed in the fatal stabbing of jogger Katie Suarez.
Mohassib, a 27-year-old former police officer who worked as a public-school teacher’s aide, allegedly made the statement after his arrest in the Oct. 30 killing of Suarez. The 28-year-old was jogging along the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn when she was stabbed twice in the neck and left to die.
Investigators tracked down Mohassib in part through surveillance footage showing him walking toward the crime scene and later fleeing. The timing of the footage matched the sequence of the apparently random attack, according to the Brooklyn criminal complaint.
Law enforcement sources told The Post that detectives eventually identified Mohassib using facial-recognition technology along with records stored in government databases. Those records included his fingerprints and photographs from his roughly six-week stint with the NYPD and his subsequent work for the city Department of Education.
After his arrest, Mohassib allegedly told detectives that he believed he had to go to the park that day because “people” would harm his family, court documents state.
He allegedly said he left the park for the nearby Verrazzano Bridge before returning, sitting on a bench and becoming covered in blood, including blood on his jacket, pants and other clothing, according to the complaint.
During questioning, Mohassib told police he “did not stab anyone,” the documents say.
Mohassib then allegedly returned to his Bensonhurst home, where he emerged about 15 minutes later wearing only underwear and threw items into a garbage chute, according to the complaint.
He told officers that he “got rid of the bloody clothing, and got rid of the knife,” the papers state. Sources said detectives are searching a sanitation barge for the suspected murder weapon.
Mohassib also acknowledged that he had blood on his hands and had tracked blood into his apartment, where he tried to clean it, according to court documents.
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“[He] further identified himself on video surveillance footage.”
Blood was splattered across the walls of the suspect’s room. Mohassib reportedly told investigators that he tried but failed to clean it, the complaint said.
The former officer spent about six weeks with the NYPD before leaving to join the US Marine Corps, but sources said he was rejected over concerns about his mental state.
Sources told The Post that Mohassib later tried to rejoin the NYPD but was turned down after appearing “disheveled” and displaying other troubling signs.
At the time of Suarez’s alleged killing, Mohassib was working as a paraprofessional in the city school system.
The city Board of Education did not respond to The Post’s request for comment Sunday.
A woman who spoke through the door at Mohassib’s home declined to comment Sunday. “I am in very deep pain right now. I don’t want to talk,” she told The Post.
Mohassib was arraigned Saturday and ordered held without bail.
Additional reporting by Fenix Suriel
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