Man Charged in Fatal Union Square Park Assault Had Long History of Racial Conflict

Martin Redrick, 40, appeared briefly in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday with his hands cuffed. He was charged in the savage attack of Jeffrey Babbitt, 62 in Union Square Park on September 4th.   (Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times) 

Manhattan/Brooklyn

Throughout his adult life, Martin Redrick bounced from one conflict to the next, frequently showing the potential for violence. He abused drugs, threw bottles and punches at the police and others, struggled with mental illness and was frequently agitated by white people. (Mr. Redrick is black.)

“Martin did not like authority and as we were growing up, the only people with authority were white people,” said a brother, Joseph Redrick, 47. “A lot of times that problem with authority was transferred to white people.”

Last Wednesday afternoon, that trait manifested itself again, according to the police. After finishing a chess game in Union Square Park, Mr. Redrick grew angry at white commuters bumping into him as they left the busy subway station and declared he was going to punch one, according to the New York Times. 

Sheepshead Bay resident Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, died after being assaulted in Union Square Park on September 4th.  

That person was Jeffrey Babbitt, a comic-book enthusiast from Brooklyn whom friends described as mild-mannered and who was leaving the station. Mr. Redrick, 40, punched Mr. Babbitt, 62, in the face, sending him to the ground and causing an injury that led to his death on Monday, the authorities said.

The assault charges against Mr. Redrick had not yet been upgraded to a more serious charge on Tuesday, but new details emerged about his troubled background, one that may have foreshadowed violence, but never apparently rose to the level that might have required lengthy imprisonment or hospitalization.

Mr. Redrick — who appears to have given the police the false name of Lashawn Marten — grew up with five brothers and a sister in Newburgh, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City.

Scarlett Thomas, who was married to Joseph Redrick until 2009, said she and Joseph adopted Martin Redrick’s son when the father was in and out of jail. And though Martin Redrick sometimes displayed anger toward white people, both Joseph Redrick and Ms. Thomas , who is white, said he was always kind to Ms. Thomas’s daughter from a previous marriage. “He called her ‘My precious little Snow White,’ ” she said.

But there had long been worries within the family about Mr. Redrick’s behavior, which had worsened with drug use, she said.

“In the ’90s, he smoked something called wet — marijuana soaked in formaldehyde,” she said in a telephone interview from Dallas, where she now lives. “Everybody who knew him knew he was unpredictable and was going to snap one day.”

Jeffery Babbitt, 62, lies on the pavement in the Southern end of Union Square Park on September 4th after being allegedly struck in the face by Martin Redrick in an unprovoked attack. Mr. Babbitt, a retired transit worker hit his head on the ground and was later declared brain dead at Bellevue Hospital.  (Photo: Joey Boots via gothamist)

In 1997, Mr. Redrick pleaded guilty to assault in Newburgh and was sentenced to six months in jail and five years’ probation, according to court records. He violated the terms of his probation and was resentenced to 16 months in prison.

After he was released from prison in 2000, officers in Newburgh had at least 20 encounters with him, said Lt. Dan Cameron of the Police Department there. Mr. Redrick lived on the streets and was repeatedly arrested or given summonses for trespassing and open-container violations.

But some of the charges were more serious, Lieutenant Cameron said. Mr. Redrick was arrested twice in 2002 for hurling bottles near police officers. In one case, Mr. Redrick punched an officer in the face. The next year he was charged with harassment after a woman leaving a Newburgh library said she took something he said about “getting stabbed in the back” as a threat.

After being charged with shoplifting in 2004, he spent time in the Middletown Psychiatric Center, according to Orange County correction officials. Ms. Thomas said Mr. Redrick had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia in 2007 and later cut off contact with his family. She said that early this year she learned he was living in New York City and spoke with him on the phone.

“He didn’t realize he had been missing for three years,” she said. “He thought he had just talked to us last week.”

He was arrested on Nov. 23, 2010, in Manhattan and charged with possession of marijuana. He pleaded guilty the next day and was sentenced to time served, according to court records.

He was most recently arrested on Aug. 13, for trying to strike a woman in Harlem and then spitting in her face, the police said. He was recently living in supported housing, a type of residence where people with mental illness can receive special services but are typically free to come and go.

Mr. Redrick, who is being held at Rikers Island in $1 million bail, was taken to State Supreme Court in Manhattan for a brief appearance on Tuesday. He wore a tan shirt, with plaid patches across his broad shoulders.

He was clearly agitated, and immediately began insisting that his new court-appointed lawyer, Michael J. Croce, hand him a business card. After repeatedly trying to interrupt as Mr. Croce spoke to the judge, Mr. Redrick grew louder and more insistent.

“Excuse me, I don’t want you to represent me if you don’t give me your business card right now,” Mr. Redrick said.

Chess players at Union Square Park were still shaken by the attack. Several described Mr. Redrick as a loner with some strange habits, but one who attracted little attention in a park where the offbeat is commonplace. Frederick Spruill, 69, said he first noticed Mr. Redrick playing chess this summer and thought he appeared to have “some kind of mental challenge.”

“He was very quiet,” Mr. Spruill said. “He would become stuck on something. If he saw something, he’d stay on it.”

Michael Benson, 54, said Mr. Redrick occasionally hinted at a violent past. “I ever tell you the time I knocked this guy out?” Mr. Benson recalled Mr. Redrick telling him.

On Wednesday, the two played several games and Mr. Redrick lost all of them, but did not seem angry about the losses, Mr. Benson said. Mr. Redrick stood up, walked over to the steps next to the busy subway entrance, and smoked a cigarette. Mr. Benson said he heard Mr. Redrick yell that he was tired of white commuters bumping into him and not saying “excuse me.”

“The next white person who runs into me, I’m going to knock them out,” Mr. Redrick said, according to Mr. Benson.

“And that’s what he did,” Mr. Benson said.

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.

Read More:

Man Charged in Fatal Park Assault Had Long History of Racial Conflict

New York Times - September 10, 2013 - By Russ Buettner and J. David Goodman 

Friends Mourn Jeffrey Babbitt, Victim In Fatal Union Square Park Hate Crime Attack 

A Walk In The Park  - September 9, 2013  

Man Attacked In Union Square Park Hate Crime Dies

A Walk In The Park - September 9, 2013 

Man Attacked In Union Square Park

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2013 

Friends Mourn Jeffrey Babbitt, Victim In Fatal Union Square Park Hate Crime Attack

Sheepshead Bay resident Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, died after being assaulted in Union Square Park on September 4th.  Martin Redrick, 40, has been charged in the heinous attack.  Redrick has been arrested numerous times. 

Manhattan/Brooklyn

For more than a decade, Jeffrey Babbitt traveled two or three times a week from his home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to a comic book store called Forbidden Planet just below Union Square in Manhattan. There, he bought the latest copies of “X-Men” or “Doctor Who,” or sometimes just chatted up the employees, who over the years had become good friends, according to the New York Times. 

For Mr. Babbitt, 62, who friends said was a retired train conductor, the store offered an escape into fantasy and a bit of a respite from home, where he cared for his 94-year-old mother, Lucille Babbitt.

“He was just a really, really, really sweet guy,” said Jeff Ayers, a manager at the store who has known Mr. Babbit for years. “One of our staff just had a baby and he was dying to see pictures.”

Mr. Babbitt was walking through Union Square near Forbidden Planet last Wednesday when he was punched in the face seemingly at random by an assailant who, the police said, declared his intention to “punch the first white man I see.”

After he was hit, Mr. Babbitt fell to the ground, striking his head on the pavement, the police said. The attacker, whom the police identified as Lashawn Marten, then struck two men who came to Mr. Babbitt’s aid, they said.

Mr. Babbitt was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where, the police said, he was eventually declared brain dead and died on Monday morning.

In a neighborhood that had long ago moved past its rough-and-tumble days, the seemingly random act of violence at 3 p.m. in a bustling park came as a shock. The police said that Mr. Marten, 40, had a long history of arrests, some for assault and drug offenses in New York City and in Newburgh, N.Y.

He was arrested shortly after the attack and charged with three counts of assault. With Mr. Babbitt’s death, those charges will most likely be upgraded by a grand jury that is to hear the case on Tuesday, according to the police.

Mr. Marten, who is black, has also gone by the alias Martin Redrick and listed a different birth date, the police said. He was living in supported housing for formerly homeless people and those with psychiatric disabilities provided by the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, said Shelley Ruchti, the group’s chief communications officer. She declined to describe the reason for his living there.

On Monday evening, many residents at Mr. Babbitt’s modest brick apartment building on Ocean Avenue in Sheepshead Bay had something nice to say about him, and could only shake their heads at the senselessness of his death.

“He was as good as good can be,” said Audrey Feifer, 75. “This should never have happened, no matter what color this person is.”

Ms. Feifer said Mr. Babbitt, who she said moved to the neighborhood from Florida about 20 years ago, used to insist on giving her rides to bus stops or to buy doughnuts.

Inside the apartment that Mr. Babbitt shared with his mother, Ms. Feifer said, he kept model steam locomotives, stacks of magazines about trains, and many comic books. He often wore shirts showing pictures of fairies and once drove Ms. Feifer out of state to join him at a Fairy-Con gathering, a festival for people who celebrate fairies.

A sister, his only sibling, helped Mr. Babbitt care for their mother, but she died from cancer about two years ago, Ms. Feifer said, and Mr. Babbitt took over all the caretaking responsibilities.

He did not seem to mind, neighbors said.

“He’d say, ‘Hi, Mom!’ so loud everybody could hear it,” said Igor Sapozhnikov, 56. “He loved his mother, and his mother loved him very well.”

Mr. Babbitt’s mother was at his bedside at least part of the time he was in the hospital, said Mr. Ayers, who visited him there. Many neighbors wonder who will care for her now.

Mr. Babbitt’s death came as the police said they were looking for a suspect in another bizarre and possibly racially motivated attack on the M60 bus in Harlem on Friday, Aug. 30.

In that unrelated attack, a man hurled a racial epithet at a 31-year-old Queens man, calling him a “cracker,” before knocking him to the ground and punching him. The victim, whose name was not released, sustained a broken nose and a fractured eye socket. The suspect, described by the police as a black man in his late 30s, fled on foot and had not been located.

At Forbidden Planet, employees were left bereft by Mr. Babbitt’s death, said Mr. Ayers, who broke into tears several times during a short interview.

Mr. Ayers had spoken to Mr. Babbitt the day before the attack when he came to the store looking to pick up a copy of a comic art book called “The Art of Grimm Fairy Tales” that he had ordered. The order had not yet arrived, and Mr. Babbitt was slightly annoyed, Mr. Ayers said.

“He’s been hounding me for weeks and weeks for this book,” he said.

Mr. Ayers said employees were also concerned about Mr. Babbitt’s mother. He said they planned to set up a fund to help continue her care.

“We’re a community here,” he said. “These are people whose lives we’re tied to.”

Jack Begg and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.

Read More:

Friends Mourn Man Fatally Assaulted in Possible Random Hate Crime

New York Times  -  September 9, 2013 - By Michael Schwirtz and Nate Schweber 

Man Attacked In Union Square Park Hate Crime Dies

A Walk In The Park - September 9, 2013 

Man Attacked In Union Square Park

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2013 

Man Attacked In Union Square Park Hate Crime Dies

Martin Redrick appears in Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday.  (Redrick had originally given police the name Lashawn Marten) Redrick was charged with assault in an unprovoked attack of Sheepshead Bay resident Jeffery Babbitt, 62, in the Southern end of Union Square Park on September 4th.  Mr. Babitt was allegedly struck in the face by Redrick after saying that he would hit the next white person who walked by.  Charges against him will likely be upgraded.  (Photo: Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)

Manhattan  

A white man who was punched in the face in Union Square by a black man who was spewing anti-white sentiment died early Monday at Bellevue Hospital, a police source said, according to the New York Daily News.  

Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, fell into a coma after he was randomly attacked Wednesday afternoon by a man who was yelling, “I’m going to punch the first white man I see!”


Sheepshead Bay resident Jeffery Babbitt, 62, lies on the pavement in the Southern end of Union Square Park on September 4th after being allegedly struck in the face by Martin Redrick in an provoked attack. Mr. Babbitt, a retired transit worker hit his head on the ground and was later declared brain dead at Bellevue Hospital.  (Photo: Joey Boots via gothamist)


Lashawn Marten, 31, was arrested on charges of misdemeanor assault in the attack. The unprovoked punch knocked Babbitt backward, and he hit his head on the ground.

Babbitt lived in Brooklyn and was caregiver to his mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, neighbors said.  After Marten assaulted Babbitt, he attacked two men who tried to help the stricken man, and then challenged two responding cops, officials said.

Marten is being held on $1 million bail. Charges against him will likely be upgraded.


Authorities say 62-year-old Jeffrey Babbitt (l.) has died less than a week after he was assaulted by a man who threatened to 'punch the first white man' he saw. 


Read More:

Man punched in the face in Union Square hate attack dies at Bellevue Hospital  

New York Daily News - September 9, 2013 - By Rocco Parascandola and Tina Moore 

Suspect appears in court in fatal Union Square beating

WABC - September 10, 2013

Man Attacked In Union Square Park

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2013