(RepublicanJournal.org) – A prominent left-wing activist has been stabbed to death in an apparently random street attack. Ryan Carson and his girlfriend had just left a wedding when they encountered a teenager. That encounter quickly escalated and ended with Carson dying on the sidewalk.
Victim Was Social Justice Activist
At 32 years old, Ryan Carson was a well-known social justice advocate. After moving from Boston in 2010 to attend the Pratt Institute, he went to work with the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), a liberal political campaigning organization that promotes causes including homelessness, green energy, and voting rights. Carson specialized in green issues and became a senior solid waste campaign manager. Friends said he was also “dismantling an individualized profit-centered way of life.” As well as his work, he was also a poet and once had a poem published; ironically, the theme was his own fear of death.
Random Street Attack
On October 2, Carson and his girlfriend Claudia Morales went to a wedding in Long Island. Around 4 a.m. the next morning, on their way home, they rested on a bench in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district. Surveillance video shows them sitting there around 4 a.m. Moments after a young black man in a black sweatshirt walked past them, the couple stood up and set off in the same direction. Then, abruptly, the man started kicking parked scooters before turning on Carson and aggressively asking, “What the f**k are you looking at?”
Carson replied that he wasn’t looking at anything, then stepped in front of Morales as the man advanced on them. As the assailant, later identified as an 18-year-old mentally disturbed habitual criminal named Bryan Dowling, attacked Carson, Morales stepped to the side, then walked after them as her boyfriend tried to flee the crazed attacker. He didn’t make it far before tripping on the bench they’d been sitting on, and before he could recover, Dowling stabbed him repeatedly in the chest, penetrating his heart as Morales stood watching. Dowling moved away, then returned to kick Carson’s body and spit at Morales before a woman ran up, called him by name, and said, “Don’t hurt him.” She then apologized to Morales and left. Morales called 911, but Carson was already fatally wounded.
Police quickly launched a hunt for the attacker. Initially, law enforcement officials said they didn’t have a description of him, which sparked rumors Morales –- who is a Black Lives Matter activist and used the anti-police slogan ACAB on social media –- hadn’t given them one. However, Bryan was recognized from the surveillance footage and arrested on October 5. Although Morales apparently didn’t pick him out of a lineup, he was charged with second-degree murder.
Carson’s friends have marked his death by launching a GoFundMe page to raise $20,000 so they can take time off work.
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