The homeless man accused oftold cops that he was ‘trying to protect’ her from a mystery murderer, prosecutors said during his arraignment Wednesday in Manhattan.
Assamad Nash, 25, told police inside Lee’s New York City apartment last month that he was trying to help his friend who was getting hurt by somebody else.
‘I tried to help my friend out. I was trying to help this female getting hurt by other people. I was trying to help the lady,’ Nash said, according to court filings.
He was arraigned on Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to charges that include murder, burglary and burglary as a sexually motivated felony.
Once police were able to break into Lee’s barricaded apartment, they found Nash hiding under her bed. The accused killer then provided statements to the police, pretending to also be a victim in the horrific crime.
‘The dude stabbed us up, the dude stabbed me in the leg. I was trying to protect the lady. The dude went out on the balcony. He escaped too,’ he claimed.
Lee, 35, was found in a blood-filled bathtub with over 40 stab wounds to her torso, head and neck.
Lee, a Rutgers University graduate, worked as a senior creative producer at Splice, an online platform for digital music.
While being removed from the apartment Nash, who has a history of misdemeanor arrests, allegedly rambled about recently being released from jail, being from Chinatown and that he had a ‘producer’ who lives in Harlem, according to court documents.
Surveillance video taken on February 13 revealed Nash creeping behind Lee as she entered her building and walked up six flights to stairs to her apartment just after 4am. Nash followed from a floor below her before forcing his way into her apartment.
Lee’s neighbors soon heard her screams during the heinous stabbing, and called the police. When they arrived, the door to Lee’s apartment had been locked, with Nash barricaded inside.
Lee’s murder is among a series of recent killings and unprovoked assaults on Asian-Americans, particularly in New York City, where there were 131 targeted attacks on New Yorkers of Asian decent in 2021, up from 27 total in 2020, according to the New York Daily News.
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