A man who was arrested earlier this week for allegedly concealing a dead woman in a sleeping bag on the street in Kips Bay is now formally accused of murdering her, among other charges, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said on Thursday.
Prosecutors said Chad Irish, 55, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday, including on charges of criminal possession of a weapon and misdemeanor menacing.
The new charges come after police arrested Irish on Monday with the help of surveillance video and community tips and charged him with concealing the body of 31-year-old Manhattan resident Yazmeen Williams, who was found wrapped in a sleeping bag with a gunshot wound to her head last Friday in front of the residential building at 207 East 27th St.
Police said they found Williams after responding to a 911 call about a suspicious package with a foul odor at that location, among trash bags. The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Williams’ death a homicide on Sunday, and a neighbor told Gothamist that he had seen the sleeping bag covered in flies and smelling of decay.
According to a criminal complaint charging Irish with second-degree murder, a witness said Irish lived with Williams in an apartment on East 28th Street. Surveillance video recovered from that building showed him “in a motorized wheelchair pulling the same blue sleeping bag” discovered on Friday via “a black plastic dolly,” the complaint stated.
Additional surveillance video reviewed by police showed Williams and Irish arguing in a hallway in the building on East 28th Street in late June, when Irish allegedly told her “I’ll shoot you,” per the document. A witness told law enforcement that when they visited the apartment and spoke with Irish on July 1, he discouraged them from entering Williams’ room. The complaint said Irish was later recorded discarding the sleeping bag on East 27th Street.
In a separate criminal complaint on the menacing charge, prosecutors said Irish displayed a gun to a witness this past Monday on East 28th Street and made them fear for their life.
Redmond Haskins, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Legal Aid Society, which has been assigned to represent Irish, said in a statement on Thursday that Irish “is disabled and entitled to presumption of innocence.”
“We have asked and are waiting on prosecutors to disclose all the evidence that is currently in their possession,” Haskins said, noting that the case is in the preliminary stage.
A video posted to social media earlier this week showed a crowd of people swarming a man being taken into custody by police outside a NYCHA building on East 28th Street, around the block from where Williams’ body had been found. In the video, people attempt to lunge in anger at the man as he is brought on a gurney to an ambulance on the street.
NYPD data shows that so far this year, two homicides have been reported in the 13th Precinct, which includes parts of Kips Bay, Flatiron and Gramercy Park, compared to one by the same point last year. Two shootings have been reported in the precinct, up from zero in the same period in 2023.