A 33-year-old man was stabbed to death during an argument in a Manhattan homeless shelter on Sunday morning, the Police Department said.
Police officers responding to a 911 call at around 11:49 a.m. found the man with multiple stab wounds to the chest at the Fort Washington Men’s Shelter in Washington Heights. He died at a nearby hospital in Harlem, the authorities said.
The police said they would not release the victim’s identity until his next of kin was notified.
At around 3 p.m. on Sunday, the police arrested and charged Javed Tyghter, 29, with murder in connection with the stabbing. The police listed the shelter, located at 651 West 168th Street, as his address.
A spokesperson for the police did not answer questions about the aftermath of the stabbing or what led up to it.
The Fort Washington shelter, which serves roughly 200 men, houses people dealing with mental illness and substance abuse. There are about three dozen such shelters in the city, and they are often chaotic places. A 2024 investigation by The New York Times found that violence and disorder were commonplace in these facilities, which are known as MICA, or “mental illness and chemical abuse,” shelters.
More than 1,400 fights had been recorded during a recent four-year span, with more than half resulting in “serious injury,” the investigation found. In 2023, a man randomly stabbed two men who were sleeping at a MICA shelter in Brooklyn, and a third at a nearby subway station. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
Officials at the agencies that oversee the shelters — the New York City Department of Social Services and the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance — did not immediately respond to a request for more current statistics on violence at the facilities.
Project Renewal, the nonprofit that operates the Fort Washington shelter under contract with the city, said that it was cooperating with the police and could not comment on the ongoing investigation of an episode it called “tragic.”
The Department of Social Services said in a statement that it was working with the police to investigate the attack and “conduct a security assessment of the building to determine whether any critical improvements can be implemented.”
Former shelter workers have described the MICA facilities as generally poorly equipped to handle the complex needs of the mentally ill, with violent and disruptive patients often getting bounced by shelter operators from one shelter to another without receiving effective help.
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