Police are making a plea for drivers to check their dashcam videos if they drove past the Belt Parkway bike path in Brooklyn where a young jogger was stabbed and left for dead last week.
Katie Suarez, 28, reportedly remains on life support on Monday, three days after the vicious Oct. 30 attack. NYPD detectives have been extensively investigating but say due to the lack of cameras and eyewitness testimony, they need help, especially from those who were driving nearby.
“We are looking for Teslas; we’re looking for Uber drivers, anybody who had a dash cam, just for the possibility that this perpetrator may have run across the Belt Parkway to escape,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
During the investigation, detectives were able to piece together Suarez’s events prior to the attack in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, last Friday.
Suarez was attacked on Oct. 30 as she jogged after work. According to police, she closed the bank with a co-worker at around 6:35 p.m. on Oct. 30. Later, she met her mother at a nearby Wendy’s fast-food restaurant around 6:50 p.m.
At 7:56 p.m., she spoke with her father on a cellphone to say she was about a half mile from their location. As time passed and she did not show up, her parents grew worried, and they set out to look for her.
Her father ran up ahead and found her clinging to life under a tree in the vicinity of Shore Parkway and Bay 17th Street. He begged a passerby to call 911.
Authorities say that they believe the nature of his injuries and the blood trail indicates that when she was stabbed, she continued to run before eventually falling to the ground.
Katie Suarez. LinkedIn
“What we see at the location is a blood trail, a heavy amount of blood. They call it arterial spurting, where the attack happens. Katie is strong enough; she’s able to run about 150 feet eastbound on the path where she finally collapses underneath a tree,” Kenny explained. “The wounds are from an upward trajectory going through her neck, hitting a vein, and it actually entered into her oral cavity.”
Suarez was rushed to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where police officially describe her condition as grave.
Chief Kenny said that, besides Suarez’s father, only one other person dialed 911, but he believes the area was more well-traveled at the time Suarez was stabbed.
Looking at a nearby license plate reader on the Belt Parkway at 14th Avenue in the space of 20 minutes — the same period of time they believe the attack took place — police over 1,700 cars drove by. They hope a car’s camera picked up something helpful.
Chief Kenny himself admitted the case echoes that of Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old Queens woman who was brutally murdered over a decade ago on Aug. 2, 2016, while out for an afternoon run in Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach. Her father also found Vetrano.
A suspect, Chanel Lewis, was arrested months after the murder and eventually convicted. He is currently serving a sentence of life without parole, though some have questioned the validity of the verdict.
“It’s very eerily similar to the Howard Beach Jogger case. It’s not too far from where it was. I ran that case as well. I’ve actually went back and read that case to see if anything jogs my memory that might assist in this,” Kenny said. “We’re really working it hard.”
Suarez is described as very family-oriented and work-oriented. Kenny himself described her as a productive member of society.
Anyone with information regarding this stabbing can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (for Spanish, dial 888-57-PISTA). You can also submit tips online at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (formerly Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.