Sayed Mohassib told detectives he woke from a blackout covered in blood and holding the murder weapon, police sources said.
Mohassib, 27, was arrested Saturday at his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, home and charged with second-degree murder in the October 30 killing of Katie Suarez, 28, a bank teller and avid runner. The ex-NYPD officer, ex-Marine and current elementary school paraprofessional was tracked down after investigators spotted him on video leaving the Shore Parkway Greenway near the time of the attack, sources said.
During questioning at the 62nd Precinct stationhouse, Mohassib claimed he had no memory of the stabbing. He said he discarded the knife in the garbage, and investigators believe that trash was hauled to a Staten Island landfill and then to a New Jersey dump.
The accused killer worked as a paraprofessional at PS 200, located just three blocks from the waterfront promenade where Suarez was ambushed while jogging. He returned to the school and continued working with children in the days after the alleged murder, sources said. Colleagues noticed him speaking incoherently and acting erratically, and they reported the behavior to police, though those reports did not directly lead to his arrest.
Students also picked up on his strange demeanor. “He was acting a little bit weird. A bit off,” a 12-year-old boy playing near the school told The Post. The boy and a friend said they saw the educator talking to himself, with the other child describing him as “nervous, worried.”
Mohassib’s psychological troubles run deep. His own mother and sister called 911 in September 2024 after he threatened to “chop them up,” sources said. Officers found him at Caesar’s Bay, about a half-mile from where Suarez was killed, and transported him to Coney Island Hospital.
His brief law enforcement career collapsed amid similar instability. Mohassib had worked as a public school para before joining the NYPD in 2022, but lasted only six weeks before leaving to enlist in the Marines. The Marines discharged him after deeming him psychologically unfit. When he tried to rejoin the NYPD just three months later, he showed up disheveled and erratic at a police post and was taken to Bellevue Hospital. His reinstatement was denied, and he returned to the Department of Education instead.
More recently, he was caught on video leaving his Brooklyn home wearing only his underwear sometime after Suarez was stabbed, sources told The Post.
Suarez had been training for a November 14 race when she went for her evening jog along the Belt Parkway waterfront promenade near Bay 17th Street, not far from her Gravesend home. She left her job at TD Bank and hit the path around 8:15 p.m. She sent her parents a final message saying she was five minutes away from their agreed meeting point. When she failed to show, her father found her body crumpled on the path. She was rushed to the hospital and pronounced brain dead, but was kept on life support so her organs could be harvested. Five recipients received her pancreas, liver, kidneys and heart, sources said.
“She didn’t deserve this,” Yasira Suarez told The Post earlier in the week. “Katie was very happy, she was a person that wouldn’t mess with anyone.”
“She was someone everyone would say left a good impression in the hearts of everybody she met,” her mother continued. “She was the type of person that thought about everyone before herself.”
Mohassib and Suarez both attended Brooklyn College at the same time, but detectives have not determined whether they knew each other or established any motive for the attack. Investigators collected forensic evidence including fingernail clippings from Suarez to determine if she struggled with her attacker, and they swabbed her phone for touch DNA. “You can say it wasn’t a robbery because she’s left with her jewelry and her phone,” a law enforcement source said. “But you can’t say conclusively it was not a sexual assault.”
Students gathered outside the 62nd Precinct, across from PS 200, to watch as Mohassib was led out at 4 p.m. Saturday. He wore a bright red Von Dutch jacket and appeared dazed and eerily calm in handcuffs, showing no reaction when someone shouted “F–k you!” from across the street.
Neighbors who knew Mohassib, whose family is from Egypt, said he had changed dramatically in recent years. He had been a regular at the local mosque but had been notably absent recently. “I see him go to pray, I see him work in the school,” a 54-year-old neighbor told The Post. “He change like three years ago — like different guy. He got nervous. I don’t know what happened.” The neighbor added that after Mohassib became a police officer and took a vacation to Egypt, “he come back different. I don’t know what happened.”
“As a father of two children, I find it very concerning that he was allowed to be around children,” Fabián, 26, a neighbor of Suarez, told The Post Saturday. “What kind of education could he be giving them?”
Mohassib is expected to face further court proceedings in Brooklyn.