On the first sweltering Sunday of the summer, East 14th Street erupted.
An aborted drug deal turned into a brawl with a glass lamp used as a weapon. An assailant in a homemade superhero cape pulled out a knife and started slashing. Three people were stabbed, one fatally.
To the Trader Joe’s shoppers who dropped their groceries and fled in horror, the violence that unfolded along a busy commercial strip in the East Village on June 23 was as surreal and random as it was terrifying.
But East 14th Street also embodies New York City’s struggles with a web of interconnected ills that have defied attempts to rein them in and have flared since the pandemic in parts of Manhattan: homelessness and mental illness, addiction and rampant shoplifting and seesaw battles for control of public space.
Along the stretch by First Avenue, even as the surrounding neighborhood grows shinier and blander and crime declines overall, there is a consensus that the forces of chaos have lately gained the upper hand.
It has been “like a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said City Councilman Keith Powers, whose district borders the stabbing site. “We have to show people that we can govern a block that is out of control.”
An angry letter he wrote in 2021 to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio citing “homeless encampments, illegal vending, obstructed sidewalks and unsanitary conditions” could have been written yesterday.
A Block That Seesaws
Joe Maller, 53, who has lived on 14th Street since 2002, traced the years of self-sustaining disorder that he said characterized the street. “It’s been up and down,” he said. “It’s definitely in a trough now.”
The fatal stabbing is the only murder so far this year in the Ninth Precinct, which includes the block where it occurred. But the neighborhood has a long history of drug dealing. People who come to buy drugs stay to raise money to buy more drugs by panhandling and selling scavenged items, residents and officials say. The nearby emergency room of Beth Israel Hospital regularly treats overdose survivors who filter back to 14th Street.
Headlines on a neighborhood news blog, EV Grieve, chronicle 14th Street’s ups and downs, particularly the downs. From 2018: “Residents voice concerns about quality-of-life issues on 14th Street and First Avenue.” Three years later: “Addressing the problem corner of 14th Street and First Avenue.” January: “Man slashed after asking man to stop urinating on car along 14th Street and First Avenue.”
One source of problems, many residents, officials and merchants agree, is the weekend flea market on the grounds of a closed Catholic school, Immaculate Conception. The flea market — across 14th Street from Stuyvesant Town, the upper-middle-class apartment complex that has its own security force — attracts unlicensed vendors who spill onto the sidewalk.
The police clear the vendors, and they quickly return. The Sanitation Department issues tickets, to little effect.
The open-air bazaar also creates a market for stolen wares, some shoplifted from chain stores that dot the street. (A 2022 clip of a man strolling out of Trader Joe’s with what looks like a stack of steaks became a viral hit.)
Lloyd Arrington, 93, has lived in his walk-up apartment between First Avenue and Avenue A since 1960. Most afternoons, he sits outside his building, reading the newspaper.
Mr. Arrington did not mind the vendors at first. “They were enterprising New Yorkers, and there’s no harm in that,” he said. “Then came the unsavory sorts.”
He saw his neighbors change their habits. Older women walked on the other side of the street to go to church. Business owners called the police about altercations.
“We all said there’s going to have to be a tragedy for something to change,” he said.
Shortly before the June 23 attack, police had cleared the sidewalk yet again. The vendors soon came back, setting the stage for the arrival of Alejandro Piedra, a 30-year-old man with a history of serious mental illness who now faces charges of murder and attempted murder.
One stabbing victim, J.C. Lopez, 31, said he was around the corner on 13th Street smoking marijuana with two friends, Clemson and Jennifer Cockfield, when Mr. Piedra approached. Mr. Lopez had nicknamed him “Anime Man” because he often wore a helmet, sunglasses and a green cape made from a blanket.
“He comes by from time to time,” Mr. Lopez said, “always for the same thing”: methamphetamine. Mr. Piedra offered to steal some merchandise from a nearby store to trade, Mr. Lopez said.
“We said come back with something like socks, or shirts, anything that’s worth it,” Mr. Lopez said. Instead, he said, Mr. Piedra returned with lighters, a brownie and juice. “We didn’t give him anything, and he got mad,” Mr. Lopez said. “He pulled out a switchblade.”
Neighbors Called Him ‘the Samurai’
In Canarsie, Brooklyn, where Mr. Piedra lived in a building called New Life Homes that offers social services to residents, some neighbors called him “the Samurai” because he wore a sword on his hip and long robes cinched with a sash.
“He looks like he’s ready for war,” said Dre Elliott, who works at a deli nearby.
Mr. Piedra, like many mentally ill New Yorkers charged in violent outbursts, was a veteran of a safety-net system that struggles to keep vulnerable people connected to effective help.
According to a 2003 article in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, he was born in the tiny island nation of Samoa and adopted at age 9 by an American military family stationed in Okinawa. His adoptive mother died when he was 10.
He grew up near Chicago and in high school took part in dramatic productions, played football and worked as a camp counselor.
But according to his social service records, he dropped out of a college criminal justice program because he had started having hallucinations. By 2017 he lived in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn.
In 2018, he was charged with felony assault for hitting an older woman with an umbrella, the police said. He told a clinician it was the first time he had followed the orders of voices in his head. After months in a public hospital psychiatric ward and the city jail on Rikers Island, Mr. Piedra had his case diverted to mental health court, which mandates treatment instead of incarceration. It is not clear what services he had received recently.
A Husband Dies Defending His Wife
After Mr. Piedra pulled the knife on 13th Street, Mr. Lopez started swinging a stick. Mr. Piedra stabbed him in the chest and the head and walked away “like nothing happened,” Mr. Lopez said.
Then, according to prosecutors, between First Avenue and Avenue A, in front of a hair-removal franchise, beside the clutter-laden blankets overflowing from the flea market, Mr. Piedra crossed paths with the Cockfields.
Things happened fast. An unidentified man smashed the glass lamp on Mr. Piedra’s head. Mr. Cockfield shouted at Mr. Piedra, “You stabbed my friend!” Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, said.
Mr. Piedra stabbed Ms. Cockfield repeatedly, then stabbed Mr. Cockfield when he rushed to defend her. Ms. Cockfield lay beside her husband as he bled out. She was critically injured but survived.
Mr. Lopez, who has been homeless since he was 17, said that after three days in the hospital and a brief court appearance, he returned to his “stomping grounds,” East 14th Street.
Can a Tragedy Make a Difference?
Since the stabbing, police have been stationed around the clock at the site. Last week, Mayor Eric Adams allocated $1 million to place a police mobile command center there, Mr. Powers said.
Mr. Powers and Carlina Rivera, the councilwoman who represents the south side of the block, are in talks with the New York Archdiocese about the market’s future. A spokesman for the Archdiocese did not respond to requests for comment.
Michael Jones, who has sold books from a folding table at 14th and First for over a decade, said he had sat through too many cycles of renewal and relapse.
“They took their time letting this stuff get out of control,” he said, using an earthier synonym for “stuff.” He added, “Now they have more of a police presence, and people can feel a little bit safer.”
Mr. Jones said that well-meaning people who gave to the panhandlers were feeding the vagrancy that fed the chaos. “A lot of people flock to this area because they know they can get money, and you end up creating a monster.”
In the wake of the stabbings, a notice appeared in the flea market lot, taped to a porta-potty.
“Due to the horrific tragedy of last week, the flea market is going to start strongly enforcing the law of not purchasing and selling stolen items,” it read. “Let’s all work together to keep the market going and keep 14th St. safe and clean.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.