New Yorker fatally stabbed in racially motivated attack
NEW YORK — The man who was fatally stabbed during a random street attack police said was racially motivated always had loved Manhattan, where he enjoyed the library and shopping, a relative said Thursday.
Timothy Caughman, of West 36th Street, had been sifting through the trash in front of a row of restaurants on Ninth Avenue when he was attacked by a man in a dark coat around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the police said.
James Harris Jackson, 28, of Baltimore, a white Army veteran with what officials said was a long-simmering hatred of black men, surrendered to the police shortly after midnight Wednesday. A day earlier, Caughman, bleeding from stab wounds to his chest and back, had stumbled into a police station, Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan South detectives, told reporters at Police Headquarters.
Caughman, 66, who was black, had walked two blocks to the Midtown South Precinct, where he arrived about 10 minutes after the attack. Officers called an ambulance and he was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was later pronounced dead.
A cousin of Caughman, Seth Peek, wanted people to know that Caughman had a full life.
“He wasn’t just a vagrant person collecting bottles,” Peek said. “That was not just what his life was. He went to college, and he was concerned with young people in the neighborhood.”
Peek said Caughman grew up in Jamaica, Queens, and, Peek believed, had earned an associate degree after attending colleges in Brooklyn and on Staten Island.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Caughman worked with young people in Queens in a program called the Neighborhood Youth Corps, Peek said.
Jackson has been charged with second-degree murder, but Aubry said the police wanted to upgrade the charge by classifying it as a hate crime.
Jackson told the police he came to New York City to make a statement by attacking black men. He told investigators where he had discarded the murder weapon, a 26-inch sword with an 18-inch blade, and told them he had knives in his pocket.
Aubry said the police had collected video evidence that seemed to corroborate Jackson’s account of the evening.
“He was very forthcoming with us,” Aubry said. “He knew what he was doing when he was coming up here, and he relayed all of that information to us.”