Last Friday night a 42-year-old father of two was stabbed in the neck while riding the subway in Brooklyn.

Just before 9 p.m. Friday, a 43-year-old man was slashed in the neck with an unknown object in Brooklyn, police said.

Tommy Bailey, the victim, was involved in a verbal dispute with another man on a southbound L train at Atlantic Avenue when he was attacked by an unknown man, according to the NYPD.

Police said Bailey was pronounced dead at Brookdale Hospital.

Initial reports, like the one above, usually mentioned that he was slashed in the neck but more recent reports suggest this was a sustained violent attack:

The officers were directed to the Atlantic Avenue subway station, on the L line, where they discovered Mr. Bailey with stab wounds to his head, back, torso and neck, according to a criminal complaint. He also suffered slash wounds to his neck.

Police have surveillance video showing the entire incident and they used that to identify a suspect. Wednesday, police arrested and charged a homeless man named Alvin Charles for the murder:

A homeless man has been arrested and charged with murdering a Brooklyn man after a dispute on a subway train.

The NYPD says that Alvin Charles, 43, was arrested Wednesday evening and charged with murder…

But today we learned that at the time of the murder last Friday, Alvin Charles was on supervised release from another subway attack last year where he allegedly stabbed someone else multiple times:

Charles had previously been arrested in July 2021 for allegedly stabbing a straphanger on an A train in Brooklyn in April of that year, the records show.

Brooklyn prosecutors had asked that Charles be held on $50,000 bail in that case, but Judge Jessica G. Earle-Gargan ordered that he be freed on supervised release. He was set to reappear in court in that case later this month…

He was accused of hurling a can of soda at the victim in that case before pulling out a knife and stabbing the man in the abdomen and upper left arm, police sources said.

Charles was initially charged with “assault, attempted assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon” in that case but it was later upgraded to attempted murder. So he attempted one murder on the subway, was give supervised release and them a few months later murdered someone else in nearly the same way. Luckily, this time he’s being held on bail despite the best efforts of his public defender.

Mr. Charles’s public defender, Roy S. Wasserman, said in court Thursday that he is also representing him in the attempted murder case, and argued unsuccessfully for bail.

“He’s never missed a court date,” Mr. Wasserman said as his client, in handcuffs, nodded along. “He’s personally showed up to court 10 times while I’ve represented him.”…

“He comes to my office. He answers my texts. He answers my calls,” Mr. Wasserman said. “In fact I had lunch with him at my office last week in a conference room. We sat. We had pizza together. We talked about his case. We spoke on speakerphone with his boss. And he’s been nothing but completely responsible on this case.”

I realize public defenders get paid to defend everyone who needs a defense but in this case is there any sense of shame over helping to keep this guy out of jail on one attempted murder and then having him (allegedly) murder a father of two before the first case even goes to trial?

Here’s a local news report on the case.