Cops released photos and a video of the three males that allegedly fatally stabbed a migrant teen last week near City Hall Park and believe the incident may have stemmed from a gang beef.
Yeremi Colino, who was traveling with a group, was stabbed to death last Thursday after a brawl outside 17 John St. Cops deemed the incident a dispute between two gangs after combing through surveillance video and canvassing witnesses, NYPD Assistant Chief Jason Savino said. According to one witness, the 1-minute brawl started after three individuals flashed gang signs, which prompted Colino’s group to confront the trio.
Savino believes the fight during which Colino was killed to be a “crew-motivated incident” involving the Los Diablos de la 42 (Little Devils of 42nd St.) gang and an Afro-Caribbean group, and that the two groups knew each other prior to the lower Manhattan clash.
“Both sides both had weapons. The victim actually swings an unknown object in a downward motion just prior to being stabbed by one of the perpetrators,” Savino said at a press conference Monday.
Colino, who was living at the Roosevelt Hotel, a migrant hotel on E. 45th St. in East Midtown Manhattan, was stabbed in the chest. An employee at a nearby Walgreens pulled the wounded man to safety inside the store and called 911, and Colino was soon transported to Bellevue Hospital, where he later died.
“The individual who passed away, they were actually following the attackers,” NYPD Assistant Commissioner and department spokesman Carlos Nieves said. “They then go out of camera and then they come back and, at that point, you see people scattering because they see what’s happening and they try to get away from the area and come into frame.”
Following the stabbing, the Los Diablos gang were said to have “vowed revenge” and called for “every Cocolo shot” — “cocolo” referring to an Afro-Caribbean migrant. Savino expressed concern about the threat as he noted that Los Diablos only have a feud with the Latin Kings gang and that this could spark a “new, undiscovered beef.”
“Truth be told, most groups will not go and confront a group flashing gang signs [over] why you’re flashing gang signs,” Savino said.
Another man, Alan Magalles Bello, 18 who was with Colino, was stabbed in the left arm and was taken in stable condition to Bellevue Hospital, where he received five stitches.
“I was with my friend yesterday. A group of people show up, like a gang, and they pull out a knife towards me and my friend,” Bello told ABC7.
Cops recovered a knife with a brown handle, two wooden sticks and a pair of pliers at the scene.
Some on social media charged that the NYPD should be dedicating as much resources and time to finding Colino’s killer as they were putting into the massive manhunt for the murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a case that’s gripping the nation.
But Assistant Chief Savino pushed back on that accusation, saying, “We treat all our cases with severity. Those are the same teams that are also correspondingly in different groups assigned to the high-profile incident.”
Cops also rebutted initial news reports that the brawl sparked from one of the groups asking the other “if they spoke English,” saying the incident was instead sparked by a gang dispute.
