A woman was stabbed to death inside her Chinatown apartment early Sunday after her alleged killer followed her home — and her final moments were caught on chilling surveillance footage.
Video obtained by The Post shows the suspect tailing the 35-year-old victim, Christina Yuna Lee, on the street as she enters her Chrystie Street apartment building, following close behind as she opens the front door and strolls into the hallway.
Minutes later, a neighbor across the hallway from the victim’s sixth-floor apartment at 111 Chrystie St. called 911 around 4:30 a.m. after hearing her screams during the brutal stabbing, law enforcement sources said.
“We’ve got cameras on every floor and in the front here,” the owner of the building said. “She got out of a cab right here and he followed her. He grabbed the front door just before it closed. He followed her all the way up, hanging back, staying one floor behind her all the way up to the sixth floor.
“Then, he waited until her door was just about closed and he went in.”
Yuna Lee was found in her bathtub “bleeding from multiple wounds to the body” — while her alleged killer was discovered hiding under a bed, according to a source and an NYPD spokesman.
“So much blood,” the building’s owner said. “My wife said I should call someone to clean all the blood but I’m going to clean it up myself. It’s the least I can do for that poor girl.”
One of Yuna Lee’s sixth-floor neighbors who called 911 recalled the victim’s desperate pleas for help.
“She was calling for help, screaming for help. I woke up to it. It was awful,” the 21-year-old neighbor said. “‘Help me! Call 911!’ — that’s exactly what she said over and over and over again.”
Responding cops found the suspect, identified by sources as Assamad Nash, 25, inside the apartment and covered in blood. Nash allegedly tried to flee the grisly scene via the fire escape before barricading himself inside — prompting the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit to bust down the door, according to sources.
“There was a male inside refusing to exit the apartment,” a police spokesman said Sunday.
FDNY medics pronounced the victim dead at 5:55 a.m.
Cops found a bloody knife in the apartment and believe it came from Yuna Lee’s own kitchen, sources said, adding that both Nash and the victim were stabbed.
Officers, who were nearby when the call came in, rushed to the scene and tried to break down the victim’s door — as she screamed for someone to call 911 inside, sources said. They even tried using a sledgehammer at one point but were initially unable to get inside until ESU showed up.
One cop who was on the roof at the time spotted Nash on the fire escape trying to flee, the sources said. He spooked him into going back inside the apartment — where he was found hiding under a bed, according to the sources.
Sources said Nash, 25, is a homeless career criminal with three open cases and a record of several escapes from police custody.
The victim, who was Asian, was a digital producer and previously lived in New Jersey, sources and neighbors said.
“She’s from New Jersey, been here less than a year,” the building’s owner said Sunday. “Such a sweet girl.”
One neighbor who heard the victim’s screams called them “horrifying.”
“It sounded like something you would hear out of a movie or of a domestic violence,” said Andrew Oakes. “I didn’t think anything of it. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s strange,’ until the police came.
“It wasn’t until I heard banging on the door and lots of people running up the stairs.”
Police are investigating whether the slaying was a hate crime.
“It’s all under investigation,” an NYPD spokeswoman said.
A police spokesman said the 911 call was prompted by “a disturbance in the apartment.”
Mayor Eric Adams denounced the attack in a statement Sunday.
“I and New Yorkers across the city mourn for the innocent woman murdered in her home last night in Chinatown, and stand with our Asian brothers and sisters today,” the mayor said.
“While the suspect who committed this heinous act is now in custody, the conditions that created him remain,” Adams added. “The mission of this administration is clear: We won’t let this violence go unchecked.”
Nash has three open cases in Manhattan dating to last year, including 27 counts of criminal mischief from an arrest last month, and two busts from last year for possession of stolen property and assault.
In the assault case, Nash is accused of slugging a straphanger in the right eye at the Grand Street station on Sept. 28 while the victim was swiping a MetroCard for a woman, sources said.
The suspect was busted in Midtown on Jan. 6 for allegedly damaging dozens of Metrocard machines at three different subway stations dating back to Dec. 8, according to a criminal complaint.
Nash allegedly used an object to jam the slots on the machines that accept bills.
He was released without bail in the assault case but skipped out and was arrested two months later on a warrant. He was again released.
Sources said Nash was also charged with assaulting a woman in May 2021, but that case was later sealed.
In January 2021, he was charged with 27 counts of criminal mischief for damaging MetroCard machines, and also hit with charges of escape and resisting arrest, the sources said.
In all, Nash has more than a half-dozen other arrests dating to 2015, sources said.
At a press conference near the scene Sunday, Asian American community leaders called the attack “gruesome” and demanded action from the city.
“This is so gruesome and so horrible and so cruel,” state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who broke down in tears while speaking, said at Sara D. Roosevelt Park near the scene.
“We have to make sure that our city has to stop saying sorry, that our state stops saying sorry,” Niou said. “Our communities deserve answers and we haven’t been given any.”
The Big Apple has seen a series of violent acts against Asian Americans in recent months — with Sunday’s fatal attack just the latest.
“Why are violent mentally ill individuals, those with a criminal past, attacking us?” said Ben Wei of the advocacy group Asians Fighting Injustice.
“This individual has at least six priors and open counts against him,” he said. “What has failed in this system to allow this to happen?”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore and Sam Raskin
