The jogger brutally stabbed in the neck in an apparently random attack on a popular Brooklyn promenade has died, her stricken mother said Tuesday, telling her daughter’s killer: “You took an angel.”
Katie Suarez, 28, was declared brain dead after the heinous attack along the Shore Parkway Greenway around 8 p.m. Friday, her mother said outside the family’s Brooklyn home.
“She passed away yesterday. Katie is unfortunately no longer with us,” said Yasira Suarez.
“Destroyed. We are all destroyed.”
Yasira demanded that her daughter’s killer surrender, saying: “You have taken an angel.”
Katie, an organ donor, was kept on life support while doctors removed her organs, police sources said.
Yasira and her husband, Katie’s father, split up to look for their daughter when she failed to show up at an arranged meeting place after jogging on a waterfront path near Bay 17th Street.
“I went to look for her and I think I walked past where she was and I didn’t see her because it was dark,” Yasira said in Spanish. “I went up on deck shouting her name and looking for her.
“She wasn’t there and that’s when I knew something had happened to her,” the mother said.
It was Katie’s father who came across their fatally injured daughter.
“It’s even harder for him, because he’s the one who found her,” Yasira said of the tragedy’s aftermath.
“He’s the one who called me and said, ‘She’s here.’ »
Katie had been cut on either side of her neck, which cops say looks like a random attack at this point. She was not robbed or sexually assaulted, and her family said she had no known enemies or boyfriends.
The young woman was training for a run on November 14 when she was attacked, her mother said.
Katie, a Brooklyn College graduate, had just left her job as a teller at TD Bank at Caesar’s Bay Mall in nearby Gravesend and met her mother outside a nearby Wendy’s restaurant around 6:50 p.m. that day – a family ritual, police sources said.
Yasira said she would warn her daughter not to run alone, but Katie always reassured her, saying, “Mom, nothing will happen to me.”
“She didn’t deserve this,” said the stricken mother. “Katie was very happy, she was a person who didn’t joke with anyone.
“She was someone who everyone said left a good impression on the hearts of everyone she met. She was the type of person who thought of everyone else before herself.”
Police have offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in this puzzling case, as investigators have yet to identify a suspect or motive.
Cops are also looking to speak with other walkers, joggers, drivers or a food truck operator who may have security or dash cam footage that could aid the investigation.
Detectives looked into all the theories, including whether someone fishing on the boardwalk could have used their bait knife to slit Suarez’s throat.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny acknowledged that the case is eerily similar to the 2016 murder of Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old Queens woman whose body was discovered by her father after she was killed while jogging by a random attacker — although that killer is behind bars.
“Everything points to this being a very family-oriented, very work-oriented person who was a productive, good-looking member of society, and unfortunately this horrible event happened to him,” Kenny told reporters Monday.
“At the moment it appears to be random. No one else would have known she was running there at the time, and at the moment it appears to be a random attack.”
A memorial flourished at the family’s home next door, where neighbors called the beloved bank teller “very professional, very kind” and “family oriented.”
“I mean, no one’s life is supposed to be taken away, you know, good or bad, but she was pretty exceptional to me, the way I interacted with her,” a neighbor said Sunday.
Suarez’s cousin, Gianluca Frances, 19, also called for additional resources to deter future attacks.
“I hope a story like this can encourage public policy makers to embed police or officers in the park, or install a camera,” Frances said.
Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-577-TIPS.
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