A Chinatown landlord who bitterly spoke out against crime after the high-profile murder of one of his tenants brutally beat an apparent homeless man holding a makeshift weapon Saturday, according to police sources.
The landlord, Brian Chin, 32, was charged with felony assault for the late-night attack that left the vagrant hospitalized with injuries so serious that he was unable to tell investigators his own name, sources said Sunday.
A police source said the beaten man also was charged with menacing for his role in the fight, which started around 10 p.m. near Chrystie and Grand streets in Manhattan.
Police sources said CCTV video taken from the scene shows the homeless man breaking a wooden chair and then menacingly wielding a piece of the wood at Chin.
The makeshift club had a nail at the tip, a police source said.
The homeless man then appeared to swing the weapon at Chin in the video.
Chin charged the man, knocking him to the ground and punching him in the head over and over again, while also appearing to kick him.
The vagrant was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he had to be intubated, a police source said.
But other video of the scene before the chair-breaking showed Chin walking up to the man and kicking him while he was lying on the ground, a police source said. The homeless man then reacted by breaking the chair, according to the source.
Chin, who is cooperating with cops, told police the homeless man had been harassing people before Chin kicked him, according to the source.
The source suggested the landlord might be traumatized after one of the tenants at his Chinatown apartment building was fatally stabbed by a random sicko in 2022.
In that killing, beloved Chinatown creative producer Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was followed home by Assamad Nash, 27, and stabbed 40 times in her own kitchen. Nash pled guilty last month to the murder.
Chin spoke to The Post after a memorial for Lee was vandalized shortly following her murder, saying he and the Asian community are “tired of being attacked.”
The landlord was released on his own recognizance on the assault charge Sunday and is set to next appear in court Oct. 10.
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