New York
Man Pleads Guilty to Murder in Fatal Stabbing of Brooklyn Activist
A man who was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of an activist on a Brooklyn street in 2023 has pleaded guilty to the killing, which prosecutors called “random and unprovoked.”
The man, Brian Dowling, 20, appeared on Wednesday before Justice Danny K. Chun of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn and accepted an offer of 20 years to life in prison in exchange for the guilty plea in the death of the activist, Ryan Carson, 32. He will be sentenced on Feb. 19, according to a news release from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Mr. Dowling’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Claudia Morales, Mr. Carson’s girlfriend, said that the plea represented the “end of a very long journey.”
“There was relief in knowing that part was over, but it is also never going to be over,” she said.
Mr. Carson was a well-known community organizer who worked as a campaign manager for the New York Public Interest Research Group and ran an advocacy campaign to end drug overdose deaths. He also wrote poetry.
His murder was met with an outpouring of grief from advocates and elected officials.
“This tireless defender of his neighbors was stolen from us,” Chi Ossé, a city councilman who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, said on X. His funeral in Massachusetts, where he grew up, “felt like a funeral for a senator,” Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who represents a North Brooklyn district and was a friend of Mr. Carson’s, told The New York Times.
Mr. Carson and his girlfriend were sitting on a bus stop bench on Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant just before 4 a.m. on Oct. 2, 2023, when a man, later identified as Mr. Dowling, walked past them and began kicking parked scooters, the police said. The couple stood up and began walking in his direction when the man suddenly turned and started yelling at them.
According to prosecutors, there was “clear” video footage of the fatal encounter, which showed Mr. Dowling shouting “I’m going to kill you” just before swinging a knife at Mr. Carson, who was trying to de-escalate the situation.
When Mr. Carson tripped and fell while backing away, Mr. Dowling stabbed him three times, including once in the heart, the police said.
The police said Mr. Dowling had kicked Mr. Carson and threatened his girlfriend as he lay on the sidewalk, bleeding out. They also said that a woman who seemed to be Mr. Dowling’s girlfriend was seen with him on the street before the stabbing and appeared at the scene soon after, calling Mr. Dowling by name and apologizing to the couple.
Mr. Dowling threw the knife, but returned to retrieve it moments later, prosecutors said, adding that investigators had later found it hidden under some greenery nearby.
Mr. Dowling surrendered later that week. A search of his apartment turned up numerous knives with handles similar to the murder weapon and clothes matching what the killer was wearing in the video, according to prosecutors.
“Many of us still shudder when recalling the horrific video showing this defendant viciously attacking Ryan Carson and stabbing him to death for no reason at all,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said. “Ryan was passionate about making our city a better place, and I hope that today’s outcome will bring his loved ones a small sense of closure.”
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
For almost 32 years, Gerald DeCock’s life in New York City has revolved around his apartment in the Hotel Chelsea. His 750-square-foot studio is where he paints, does yoga every morning, meets clients for haircuts and never, ever cooks — all for $2,700 a month, a steal for the prime Manhattan location. Rooms in the recently renovated hotel typically start at about $500 a night.
That may all be about to change. After a yearslong legal battle, the hotel’s owners may evict Mr. DeCock, who believes he has the only unit that is not rent-stabilized in the residential side of the building.
He isn’t ready to think about starting over. He knows it will be difficult to find a place he can afford downtown, near his friends and his favorite restaurants.
Now, Mr. DeCock is hoping for a miracle — or at least a check from the building’s owners that can help him land on his feet. (The hotel’s press representatives did not reply to requests for comment.)
Between cutting hair and selling paintings, Mr. DeCock, who is 67, made $70,000 last year.
No ConEd Bills
Mr. DeCock arrived in New York in the early 1990s after a stint in Paris, doing hair for photo shoots. He bounced around apartments in Chelsea before a friend told him about a newly available unit in the hotel, where she lived at the time.
The $2,000 per month studio was small, but had high ceilings. It looked like the somewhat sterile hotel room it had been, with white walls and not much else to it, except for an old stove that never got especially hot.
He moved in on Oct. 1, 1994, and has been there ever since.
There is no sign that any corner of the walls was ever bare. The apartment is a riot of color, with every inch, including the floors and one side of the oven, painted in bursts of hot pink and gold and purple. His paintings line the walls, and there is always incense burning. All the other doors on the floor are painted a muted black. He has papered his with overlapping triangles of fuchsia, silver and bright blue.
Over the years, as Mr. DeCock has decorated and redecorated, he has made his apartment the hub of his social life and his workplace.
He sees clients for haircuts at his home, or sometimes meets them in their own homes, so he does not have to rent space at a salon. He charges $150 to $200 per haircut and has been seeing some of the same clients for decades. Last month, he made about $6,000 on haircuts alone.
The apartment is warm and well-insulated in the winter, because it’s on a high floor. Though the studio tends to get stuffy in the summer, the air conditioning bill has always been covered by the hotel, because it’s impossible to sort out whether the residents or hotel guests who share the hotel’s floors are using the energy.
Mr. DeCock doesn’t think he’s ever seen a ConEd bill for this apartment.
Home Is Where the Fumes Are
The walls are covered in a patchwork of paintings he has created on his kitchen table or on the floor, largely motifs of moons, suns, crosses and other “spiritual” symbols.
Most of his paintings are done on 16 inch by 20 inch canvases and sell for $500, though he has one 10 foot by 10 foot piece he is hoping to sell for $20,000.
He sold a package of 21 paintings to the hotel, at a 20 percent discount, for about $8,680 total. He sees the sale as a good reason for the hotel’s owners to keep him in his home, even though they could turn his apartment into a large hotel room. “I’m your brand, man,” he said, referring to the owners. “What are you doing?”
As Mr. DeCock has started to face the likelihood that he’ll soon have to move, he hosted a sale to empty out dozens of paintings. He made about $6,000 over a few days, as friends, neighbors and at least one local celebrity streamed in and out of his apartment, toting paintings under their arms as they left.
Mr. DeCock tries to keep the cost of his painting materials low. He sticks to inexpensive canvasses from Michaels or Blick Art Materials right across the street, where a pack of twenty 16 x 20 inch canvasses sells for $51.49. And he uses only acrylic paint, which is less expensive than oil-based paint. It also gives off fewer fumes, which is helpful, since he paints a few feet away from his lofted bed.
“I call this place the vortex,” Mr. DeCock said of his apartment. “It brings out the creative juices.”
In My Neighborhood
Mr. DeCock hasn’t left New York in as long as he can remember. He barely even goes to Brooklyn.
“Everything I do is in the neighborhood,” he said. It’s where he meets friends, eats his meals and takes long walks on the piers by the Hudson River.
What Mr. DeCock doesn’t do, he said, is buy clothes or shop for much of anything, including groceries. He does not drink coffee at home. His fridge is empty save for a bag of grapes recently brought over by a friend, and he stores his paint bottles above the freezer. There is a sole bottle of vinegar in the pantry.
Mr. DeCock, who is a vegetarian, stopped cooking after the pandemic, when he admitted to himself that he was terrible at it.
Now, he goes out for almost every meal — although he often skips lunch or dinner without noticing. He might run across the street for an order of the $27 seitan scaloppine at his favorite vegan restaurant, or walk a few blocks to a Mexican restaurant, where he’ll order the vegetarian enchiladas for $24.50.
When Mr. DeCock is home and not working or sleeping, he’s often watching television. His big splurge is cable, his Spectrum bill is $250 a month. He also pays for Netflix, $19.99 a month, and Hulu, $18.99 a month. A Colorado native, Mr. DeCock sometimes misses nature, so he compensates by watching reality television shows about people who have to survive in the wilderness.
It reminds him that he’s happy to live in New York and really happy to be in his apartment at the Chelsea.
“I’ve had a life here,” he said. “It’s defined me.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, is in a Florida hospital in critical condition, his spokesman said Sunday.
The spokesman, Ted Goodman, would not specify which hospital and said that the former mayor “remains in critical but stable condition.”
“Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak,” he said, before asking “that you join us in prayer” for the former mayor.
It is unclear when Mr. Giuliani, 81, was taken to the hospital.
President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, called Mr. Giuliani a “True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR.”
He used the occasion to again advance his false claim that Democrats “cheated” in the 2020 election.
“They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” he said.
Mr. Giuliani has struggled with legal and financial problems in recent years, and in the summer of 2025, he was involved in a car crash in New Hampshire in which he suffered a fractured vertebra. After that, Mr. Giuliani made at least one public appearance in a wheelchair.
Mr. Giuliani became mayor in January 1994 after he defeated Mayor David N. Dinkins, who was running for a second term. He remained in office until December 2001 and helped lead the city in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Later, he became a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump during the president’s first term and quickly became embroiled in a number of investigations related to the presidency.
Mr. Giuliani was a crucial part of the team that helped Mr. Trump advance the claim that he won the 2020 election. After Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Giuliani was indicted multiple times and contended with a number of costly defamation suits related to those efforts. Now disbarred, he has kept a far lower profile during Mr. Trump’s second term in office.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Along the Park
Dear Diary:
It was April Fools’ Day, and the weather kept changing from sunny to drizzle, as if the gusty wind was moving the sun back and forth behind a cloud.
I put my jacket on and off as I walked along Prospect Park. The trees were still bare, but spring was slowly awakening with yellow forsythias, and every child walking by stared at my new purple hair, hungry for color.
A guy in the bike lane yelled, “Hey!”
I turned to him.
“Sorry,” he said, pointing to someone else. “I’m talking to this guy.”
“But you actually look familiar,” I said.
“So do you,” he said, laughing.
I entered the park to hear pop music near the band shell. Two people with a portable speaker were dancing.
I wanted to join the party, but I realized that I hear the music, so I’m in the party. I danced along from a distance.
From high above, hundreds of blackbirds swooped down like falling peppercorn into the black-and-white woods ahead. As I got closer, I saw specks of tiny green buds emerging on each tree limb.
I left the park, passing three people who had converged because their dogs could not contain their joy. The people laughed like old friends, but within seconds they had walked off separate ways.
As I passed Seeley Street, I overheard a friend through the open window, cheering on a drum student.
I laughed. I should be getting home before the possible rain, I thought, but today, everywhere was home.
— Mare Berger
S. Klein’s Basement
Dear Diary:
It was around 1960, and my mother, my sister and I were in the bargain basement at the S. Klein department store on Union Square.
My sister, 13, was trying on winter coats in the aisle between the bins and discussing two final options with my mother when a woman riding the escalator up to the ground floor weighed in.
“Take the red!” she called out.
We took the red. I miss S. Klein’s.
— David Hammond
Brooklyn Warehouse
Dear Diary:
I woke up to my alarm at 2:45 on a Saturday morning, then maneuvered trains and city blocks through darkness to an unremarkable warehouse in Brooklyn.
Inside was a cathedral of music. Hips gyrated, and arms exalted rhythm. Fog embraced kissers, dancers, exhilaration, prayer, meditation, community.
I found my intention and connected with my spirit and the energy of bodies around me, alone and together, holding friends as family and strangers as friends.
I departed at 8:45 a.m. to a cold, golden morning, feeling lighter, freer, learned and loved.
A shopkeeper opening up for the day called out from behind me, his question nearly drowned out by the morning traffic.
“Hey, what’s happening over there?” he asked.
“Just a little dance party,” I replied. “Nothing crazy.”
— Carlie Cattelona
Helping Hand
Dear Diary:
I ride my bicycle 99 percent of the time. It’s just me and the city. I move fast enough to keep things interesting, but slowly enough to catch the weather changing or feel the mood of the people on the sidewalks.
Every so often, I have to take the train. On very rare occasions, it’s me, the train and my bike, a combination no one ever seems thrilled to encounter.
Because I know this, I try to shrink myself into an apologetic bicycle origami project once I’m on the train. I fold. I hover. I whisper “sorry” to people who haven’t even seen me yet.
On one such evening, I was trying to avoid anyone’s shins while hauling my bike up a flight of stairs after getting off the train, when I felt someone close behind me.
Terrified that I’d clipped someone, I whipped around to see a smiling woman who had one hand casually gripping the back of my bike.
“I got you,” she said, like we were old friends moving a couch.
I told her I had it under control.
“Two hands are better than one,” she said. “I got you.”
So we climbed the stairs together: me, my bike and a total stranger, moving in perfect, unspoken coordination. At the top, she let go, nodded and vanished into the crowd.
— Evan Abel
Central Park Zoo
Dear Diary:
Years ago, our nanny would take our son and daughter to the Central Park Zoo, where they could be set free from their stroller.
It was safe because the children loved the zoo and always stayed in the nanny’s sight and because the zoo’s walls meant there was no way they could leave.
One spring day when I was not working, I decided to accompany them all on a walk through the park, with the kids in their stroller.
As we passed the zoo, a guard at the entrance beckoned our nanny over and had a deep consultation with her.
She was laughing when she came back.
“He wanted to know who was that strange woman walking with me,” she said.
— Georgia Raysman
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