Just hours after thousands in Flushing celebrated Chinese New Year on Main Street, Zhang Hongqi of Holly Street in Flushing was stabbed to death at about 4 a.m. on Sunday, apparently for a few pieces of jewelry and a cell phone.
According to reports, the victim walked apart from a group which had left a New Year’s party at an apartment on Elder Avenue and was headed home when he was confronted near the corner of Elder Avenue and Colden Street.
Neighbors report that they heard shouting in both Chinese and English. Zhang was stabbed four times in the stomach and chest and died later at New York Hospital Queens.
As he staggered after his killers, trailing blood for yards on the icy sidewalk in the desolate area behind a section of the Queens Botanical Garden, he was heard to shout, “Give me my stuff back!” Zhang, who emigrated five years ago from China, worked as a restaurant deliveryman on the East Side of Manhattan to support a wife and teenage daughter back in his homeland.
Published reports had Zhang’s friends walking either in front of, or behind him, but they could not catch up with the killers, who fled south on Colden Street after the stabbing. Security video from a nearby supermarket captured the partygoers on their way home, but did not show the robbery.
According to police, they do not know if robbery was the initial motive, and have no reason to believe the crimes were racially motivated, as local residents who heard the shouting between the two groups did not report any racial epithets being used.
As of Tuesday, February 20, detectives at the 109th Precinct described the killers as three black men between the ages of 18 and 20, last seen headed south on Colden Street from Elder Avenue at about 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, February 18.
Anyone with information regarding the robbery-homicide is urged to call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-577-TIPS (8477).
Lunar New Year killers still at large
By Victor G. Mimoni
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