Man Who Fought Robbers Had Killed in 1994
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Police say a martial-arts-trained subway conductor had a history of fighting back before he pulled his own knife on a group of muggers who stabbed him Thursday on an upper Manhattan street.
They say 39-year-old Maurice Parks killed a would-be robber in self-defense in 1994. He wasn’t prosecuted in that case and hasn’t been charged with any crime in Thursday’s melee, which left a bystander, Flonarza Byas, dead. Authorities haven’t determined whose knife killed Byas or what role he played in the fray.
A state senator, Eric Adams, is urging prosecutors to hold Parks’s attackers responsible for Byas’ death.
Parks and one of the robbery suspects are hospitalized with stab wounds. A teenage suspect has been arrested on robbery charges.
