NYC landlord who once spoke out against crime is arrested for allegedly beating up threatening vagrant

A Chinatown landlord who had spoken out vehemently against crime following the sensational murder of one of his tenants brutally beat an apparently homeless man with an improvised weapon on Saturday, according to police sources.

The landlord, 32-year-old Brian Chin, has been charged with aggravated assault. The attack occurred late at night and the vagrant was hospitalized with injuries so severe he could not even give investigators his name, sources said Sunday.

According to a police source, the man who was struck also faced menacing charges for his role in the brawl, which began around 10 p.m. near the intersection of Chrystie and Grand streets in Manhattan.

According to police sources, surveillance camera footage from the crime scene shows the homeless man breaking a wooden chair and then threateningly hitting Chin with a piece of wood.

There was a nail on the tip of the improvised club, a police source said.

In the video, it looks as if the homeless man is aiming the gun at Chin.

Chin attacked the man, threw him to the ground, punched him repeatedly in the head and appeared to kick him.

The tramp was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he had to be intubated, a police source said.

However, another video of the scene before the chair was broken showed Chin walking up to the man and kicking him while he was on the ground, a police source said. The homeless man then responded by breaking the chair, the source said.

Chin, who is cooperating with police, told police the homeless man was harassing people before Chin kicked him, according to the source.

The source suggested that the landlord may have been traumatized after one of the tenants of his Chinatown apartment building was stabbed to death by a random madman in 2022.

In that murder, popular Chinatown creative producer Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was followed home and stabbed 40 times in her own kitchen by 27-year-old Assamad Nash. Nash pleaded guilty to murder last month.

Chin spoke to The Washington Post after a memorial to Lee was vandalized shortly after her assassination, saying he and the Asian community were “tired of being attacked.”

The landlord was released on bail on Sunday from the assault charge and is due to appear in court again on October 10.