BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Police have made an arrest in the fatal stabbing on Mon., March 25, around 8:47 p.m., in front of 1115 F.D.R. Drive, near E. 11th St., at the Jacob Riis Houses.
Responding officers found a 27-year-old man with a stab wound to the stomach. E.M.S. medics transported the victim to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
On Wed., March 27, police released the name of the victim, Phibeon Smalls, 27, of 710 E. Ninth St., and said that Christopher Dixon, 26, of the same building, had been arrested for his murder. The victim lived on the second floor and the alleged killer lives on the fifth floor at the address, which is slightly less than a block west of the Riis Houses.
A witness reported the two had argued prior to the stabbing, a police spokesperson said on Tuesday, though it was not clear how long before the incident they had quarreled.
“Apparently, they had a little bit of an ongoing back and forth, and this is the first time it turned violent,” Captain John L. O’Connell, the Ninth Precinct’s commanding officer, told The Villager on Wednesday. “It was an isolated incident. There was no gang or narcotics nexus. This was a specific thing between these people. We have no signs of retaliation.”
The East Village precinct had impressively gone nearly two years without a murder, he noted.
“I was hoping, but we didn’t quite make it to two years,” he said.
According to an “Off the Grid” article by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, 710 E. Ninth St. was originally built as an “H”-style public school in 1876 and continued to serve as such until the 1970s. After that, it was the home of Loisaida Inc. for 30 years.
According to the G.V.S.H.P. article, the building then underwent a complete renovation funded by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Supportive housing units for youth aging out of foster care, plus a new 10,000 square-foot Loisaida Community Center, were created as part of the renovation.
