B’klyn homeless man held in fatal ‘tent’ stabbing
A homeless man has been charged with stabbing a stranger to death and wounding her friend because they were too close to the tent he was living in on a Brooklyn street, police said Monday.
Damari Bowles allegedly stabbed pharmacy technician Lizseh Casserly (photo), 32, in the chest and neck on Nov. 27. He also attacked her friend, Carlos Figueroa, 40, knifing him in the back, police said.
Bowles, 28, is charged with murder and weapon possession.
“She was trying to save me,” Figueroa, 40, told the Daily News days after the attack. “We were trying to save each other.”
Figueroa and Casserly left a birthday party and were walking back to his car near the corner of Herkimer Place and Perry Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant when a group of homeless men confronted them at 2:25 a.m., the survivor remembered.
“They started arguing with us,” Figueroa said. “We started arguing back. It happened so fast.”
A moment later, the killer pulled a knife and lunged at Figueroa and Casserly.
“I got cut, she got cut,” Figueroa recalled. “I got stabbed, she got stabbed.”
Police believe Bowles was upset because Figueroa and Casserly parked too close to his tent in a homeless encampment, but Figueroa didn’t see the tent when he pulled into the spot.
“I didn’t even notice the tent until we came back,” he said.
Casserly and Figueroa were rushed to separate hospitals. A few hours later, Figueroa’s girlfriend told him that Casserly died.
“She was a good friend,” Figueroa said. “Since I knew her, she was a good woman. She was all about her kids. She was a lovey-dovey. She loved everybody.”
The two weren’t planning on attending the party that night but decided to at the last minute.
“She wasn’t going to go,” said Figueroa. “I wasn’t going to go. But we went anyway. And look what happened.”
Casserly was a mother of two.