The jogger left clinging to life after she was stabbed on the Brooklyn waterfront was trying to meet up with her parents for her regular after-work run with them when she was attacked, police sources said Sunday.
Katie Suarez, 28, who works at the TD Bank on Shore Parkway in Bath Beach, typically met up with her parents at the Wendy’s next to her job after getting off work but on Friday night her father was running late, sources said. Usually the three of them would jog together from there.
Her mother stayed behind for her dad while Suarez started her run without them, the sources said. When her dad arrived, he called Suarez to find out where she was, sources said.
Suarez said she’d be back in a few minutes to join up with them. But when she didn’t show up, her father became concerned and called her again, the sources said.
When he got no answer, Suarez’s mother and father split up to look for her.
Her father found her less than a mile away on the Shore Parkway Greenway promenade off the Belt Parkway near Canton Ave. about 8:15 p.m. She had been stabbed multiple times in the neck, police said.
A passing cyclist called 911 at her frantic father’s request, police sources said. Medics rushed Suarez to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where she remains in critical condition.
Police over the weekend scoured the area with K9 and aviation units, drones and scuba divers
Cops have not yet been able to identify a suspect or establish a motive. On Sunday, the NYPD released a photo of Suarez, wearing a T-shirt and bib for at the Frozen Bonsai 5K held on March 27 in Prospect Park. She finished that run in 42 minutes and 50 seconds, records show.
The victim lives with her parents, who declined to comment Sunday, in Gravesend.
Suarez graduated from Sunset Park High School in 2016 and earned an associate’s degree from Kingsborough Community College in 2018 and a bachelor’s in television and radio from Brooklyn College in 2020, according to her LinkedIn.com profile.
She started working as a teller for TD Bank in 2021.
Cops are asking anyone who may have seen her between 7:56 p.m. and 8:12 p.m. near the eastbound bike path on the Belt Parkway between Bay 8th and Bay 17 Sts. to call Crime Stoppers (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
The stabbing bears echoes of a brutal murder in Howard Beach, Queens, in August 2016, where jogger Karina Vetrano was fatally beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted.
The convicted killer in that case, Chanel Lewis, is serving life without parole, though earlier this year an appeals court ruled he can continue his appeal on the grounds that authorities used “a racial dragnet” to capture and convict him.
Cops in the 62nd Precinct, who protect the section of the Shore Parkway promenade where Suarez was attacked, have seen a 17% increase in assaults this year, from 202 last year to 237. There’s only been one murder in the precinct this year, but there had been none by this point last year, cops said.
With Rebecca White and Julian Roberts-Grmela