A homeless 21-year-old man was stabbed to death in a Brooklyn playground Tuesday morning, police said.
The scene of the slaying, Clinton Hill’s Steuben Playground, is where a Venezuelan migrant was shot to death earlier this year.
In the latest violence, the victim was stabbed in the stomach during a confrontation with a man near Flushing Ave. and Steuben St. about 8:45 a.m.
Medics rushed him to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:20 a.m., police said.
“They need to do something because it’s a bunch of people from the shelter that set up in the park,” said a truck driver who gave his name as Ralph. “This isn’t surprising. There was a incident a few months ago of a shooting.”
“It used to be a lot of kids playing in this park, now you don’t see that no more,” he added. “Everything is just upside down … They have camps set up here at times. People are scared to come to that park and it just gets worse and worse.”
The victim lived in a migrant shelter on nearby Ryerson St., though his immigration status was not immediately clear.
In July, two men were shot outside the same shelter by a moped passenger who jumped off the vehicle and opened fire, striking the intended target, Enny DeJesus Urbina Mendez, 21, and another man, Francisco Fuentes Rangel, 59. The younger victim died that night, the other victim two days later.
The shooter got back on the moped and fled with the driver. They crashed about two minutes later and police arrested Jorge Said Benitez Villa, 26, who broke his hip in the smash up. His accomplice is still being sought.
Police at first thought the double murder was connected to the playground shooting, which occurred seven minutes earlier, and that they were each sparked by ongoing tensions between the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and an offshoot, Anti-Tren.
But cops later determined the playground shooting, unlike the shelter slayings, was not related to those tensions, with police charging a city Parks Department cleaner, Elijah Michell, with allegedly shooting Arturo Jose Rodriguez-Marcano, 30. Michell is charged with murder as a hate crime.
According to prosecutors, Mitchell and Rodriguez Marcano got into a heated argument about a migrant tent in the park on July 18, when Mitchell ranted about the encampment and started tearing down the tarps.
Mitchell then retreated to his car, only to return to confront Rodriguez Marcano by lifting his shirt and revealing a gun — but was held back by other park workers, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney.
Three days later, while off duty, Mitchell went back to the park and shot Rodriguez Marcano in the chest while the victim was sleeping, prosecutors said.
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