Police released an image Saturday of a man they consider the key suspect in a fatal stabbing that claimed the life of 34-year-old Christian Torres in the Bronx this past week.
The man pictured in the newly unveiled photo is being sought in connection with the attack that left Torres with a fatal chest wound. It occurred inside Torres’ apartment building on University Ave. near W. 188th St. in the Fordham area of the borough around 1:35 p.m. on July 31.
“He’s the main guy,” an NYPD spokesman said Saturday.
The image was taken from surveillance footage recorded after the attack, which shows the suspect taking a grey hoodie out of his jeans and passing it to an accomplice in a likely attempt to disguise himself, cops said.
Torres’s father told the Daily News that he believes the knifing was in retaliation for a beating his son gave a neighbor who called him a child molester earlier in the week
NYPD/DCPI
The NYPD released this image of a man wanted in connection with a fatal stabbing that claimed the life of 34-year-old Christian Torres in the Bronx.
Torres was the sole caregiver of his mother, who suffers from cancerous brain tumors and is divorced from his father, according to his friend Tony Alvarez.
“I watched my friend die,” Alvarez told the Daily News. “He’s a hard worker who took care of his mother. He’s all she has.”
The victim leaves behind a fiancee, Tasha Melvin, who said she would honor his memory by supporting his ailing mother.
“He took care of his mother, and now she has no one,” Melvin told The News. “I’m going to do what I can to help. It’s messed up.”
The violence began as a brawl between Torres and another man in the building’s courtyard, and it turned deadly when the victim’s rival called in reinforcements and the fatal blow was struck, Alvarez said.
“The guy came back with 10 guys,” Alvarez said. “I said ‘Yo, Chris go upstairs, they’re coming for you.’ He said, ‘No I got to take my mom upstairs.’”
The victim’s father rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital after he learned of the stabbing but he said he was too late to say goodbye to his son, who worked in construction.
“He was already gone,” Miguel Torres, 57, told The News on Thursday.
Torres’ father recounted the beating his son had dished out to a man who lived across the street from their University Ave. apartment.
“He had called me and told me there was somebody across the way calling him a child molester,” the father said. “He said, ‘Pop, I’m sorry.… The guy was doing it again, and I kicked his a–.’”
Anyone with information that could lead police to the suspect is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at (800) 577-8477