A bouncer in Williamsburg who was knifed to death while on the job was trying to help a coworker when he was killed, police said.
On the morning of Feb. 10, Laurence Hopkins, 61, was working a night shift as a security guard. He was seated on a chair, eating a chicken wing from a plate inside the garden bar and grill on the corner of 140 Graham Ave., and had no idea what was going to happen next.
According to police chief of investigations Joseph Kenny, a woman working at the bar was pushing her way through the crowd at around 1:00 in the morning when she was accosted by two men who appeared to be deliberately blocking her path. The altercation escalated from a yelling match to a physical altercation, in which Lawrence intervened.
He rises to assist the female employee, and while he is attempting to defuse the situation, there are numerous witness accounts of him telling everyone to ‘Be cool, be cool,’ Kenny said. One of the men struggles and stabs the man in the neck from behind, seemingly without provocation, according to Kenny. “The poor guy didn’t know what hit him,” he said.
Hopkins was knifed multiple times throughout the body, the most serious wound being through the neck. The knife wound was so severe that it punctured his throat, according to Kenny. He also had a 4.5 inch deep wound under his right arm and a stab wound to his chest.
Collaborators tried to resuscitate Hopkins and tried to staunch the bleeding until rescuers arrived, but he passed away shortly after at New York City’s (NYC) Woodhull Hospital.
Despite the fact that there were about thirty people at the bar at the time, police say that many of them reported that they didn’t see much of what happened, but what’s even worse is that most of them didn’t do anything to assist the bouncer at all.
Some of them even drank before walking past the victim, who was bleeding to death on a bench, Kenny said.
According to reports, police have recovered the murder weapon, have a video of the incident, and are trying to make arrests.
