A “mentally disturbed” 18-year-old man been identified as a person of interest in the brutal and random stabbing murder of a 32-year-old Brooklyn activist and poet, police sources said Wednesday.
Investigators believe that the maniac seen on video ruthlessly stabbing 32-year-old Ryan Carson — who has not yet been arrested — is a teen who just two months ago smashed items in his girlfriend’s apartment after a fight, police sources said.
At that time, his aunt, the 911 caller, described him as mentally disturbed, the sources said.
Carson was waiting with his girlfriend at the B38 bus stop at Lafayette Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant when the senseless attack unfolded around 4 a.m. Monday morning.
The couple had just returned from a wedding when a male — believed to be the teen — approached up the road, acting erratically and knocking over parked scooters as he came.
Video of the incident showed the couple standing up to walk away after the suspect passed, before the madman turned around and yelled “What the f–k are you looking at?”, then launched himself at Carson.
The pair grappled as the suspect repeated “I’ll kill you!” and Carson told him to calm down, before drawing a knife, disturbing footage shows.
Carson was stabbed multiple times in the chest before the suspect appeared to spit at the girlfriend, toss the knife, and take off.
A woman believed to be the assailant’s gal pal yelled at him to stop — and then took off behind him after apologizing to the victim’s horrified girlfriend, according to sources and the footage.
Carson’s girlfriend held her mortally wounded beau in her arms, and called 911. He was rushed to Kings County Hospital Center, but couldn’t be saved.
“It’s a horrific, brutal murder of someone who worked piously to help make this city a better place,” Carson’s roommate, 31-year-old Tom Krantz, told The Post.
The assailant is known to frequent the area of Commodore Barry Park in Fort Greene, and works at a school in Clinton Hill, according to police sources.
He was issued three summonses for disorderly conduct in 2022, and was the victim of a robbery in 2021, the sources said.
Carson, meanwhile, was well-known among his friends and community for being tirelessly selfless and generous. He moved to New York City from the Boston area to attend the Pratt Institute in 2010.
During his 13 years in the city, Carson became an outspoken activist for the environment and sustainability, Krantz said, and had a knack for rallying people around a cause.
“He’s really… like the epicenter of an entire community that he created, that he brought together,” Krantz said, adding it was remarkable “how much he actually did for the entire city and for his friends.”
“I don’t think anyone is exaggerating when they say he would give the shirt off his back,” his roommate said. “He was the guy that bent over backward time and time again to be there with his friends.”
A published poet, Carson once wrote a piece about his own death called “Anxiety.”
“That it could come while someone waits for me, that I couldn’t call to let them know I was held up,” he wrote in the poem.
Former classmate of Carson’s, Acadia Cutschall, 32, said he was her “best friend,” and recalled a time he was able to talk a mugger down from robbing him.
“I was present once when he literally talked a guy out of mugging him,” she said. “He gave him some money.”
She said Carson would probably have tried to help out the man who killed him, if he’d been given the chance, and that if he could speak about his own death he wouldn’t make it about himself.
“It wouldn’t be about him,” said Krantz. “It would be about trying to solve what’s going on.”