A man rejected by both the NYPD and the Marines for psychological instability was hired by New York City's public school system to work alongside children — and was still on the job days after allegedly stabbing a 28-year-old jogger to death. Sayed Mohassib, 27, worked as a paraprofessional at PS 200 in Brooklyn until his arrest Saturday for the October 30 murder of Katie Suarez, who was training for the New York City Marathon when he allegedly stabbed her twice in the neck on a Gravesend waterfront promenade.
This is institutional failure stacked on institutional failure. The Marines discharged Mohassib in 2022 after finding him psychologically unfit. The NYPD hired him that October, watched him leave after six weeks to join the Marines, then refused to rehire him in January 2023 because supervisors said he appeared disheveled and exhibited concerning behavior. Yet the city's Department of Education took him on as an hourly support staffer and then, in 2024, promoted him to paraprofessional — a job that put him in a room full of children every day.
The Post Millennial reported that in 2024, police were called to Mohassib's Bensonhurst apartment after his mother and sister told officers he had threatened to "chop them up." The New York Post added that his mother told police he had previously killed the family pet. Neither red flag appears to have cost him his school position.
After allegedly murdering Suarez on a Friday, Mohassib returned to the classroom that Monday, according to law-enforcement sources cited by the Post. He was only nabbed Saturday, after surveillance footage captured him entering and exiting the park area and facial-recognition technology matched photos from his government and public-service work.
Mohassib reportedly told police he carried a knife to the park because "people were going to come and kill his family." He claimed he blacked out and regained consciousness to find blood on his clothing. Surveillance video showed him returning to his apartment drenched in blood, and he admitted to trying to clean blood splatters off his bedroom walls.
Parents at PS 200 were left reeling. "My daughter saw him last night on TV and told me, 'Dad, I see him every day!'" father Joseph Hasbani told the Post. Parent Jasmine Cotto, who has a first- and second-grader at the school, said: "You don't know who is teaching our kids. It's just shocking."
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ordered a "full review" into how Mohassib was hired, stating that "nothing is more paramount than the safety of our students." The DOE said Monday that Mohassib had been fired. A review after a woman is dead and children spent days in a room with an accused killer is not accountability — it's a press release.
The question Mamdani's review needs to answer is simple: who at the Department of Education signed off on hiring a man the Marines and the NYPD wouldn't touch, and why did a 2024 police call about death threats against his own family not trigger his removal from a school building? Name the officials. The public deserves to know who let this happen.
