Homeless man in fatal stabbing of NYC dad was released without bail in subway slashing case
A homeless man accused of stabbing a dad of two to death on a Brooklyn L train was free without bail in another similar subway altercation at the time, The Post has learned.
Alvin Charles, 43, was ordered held without bail on murder charges Thursday in the Sept. 30 attack on 43-year-old Tommy Bailey.
Charles was arrested in July 2021 in another subway fracas for allegedly stabbing a straphanger on an A train in Brooklyn in April of that year, court records show.
Brooklyn prosecutors had asked that Charles be held on $50,000 bail in that case, but Judge Jessica G. Earle-Gargan instead ordered that he be freed on supervised release. He was set to appear in court in the case later this month.
“If they [had] done something about it back then, Tommy would have still been alive and we wouldn’t be talking right now,” said Jaylin, Bailey’s 18-year-old neighbor in Canarsie. “His death is on their hands. No common sense. That’s sad.”
Charles is accused of hurling a can of soda at the victim last year before pulling out a knife and stabbing the man in the abdomen and upper left arm, according to court documents and law-enforcement sources.
He initially faced charges of assault, attempted assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon in that incident — but was re-indicted this year and hit with a higher charge of attempted murder, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Charles remained free on supervised release, and allegedly attacked Bailey near the Atlantic Avenue station in East New York just before 9 p.m. last Friday.
The two men had gotten into an argument on a southbound L train when Charles allegedly drew a knife and stabbed Bailey in the neck before fleeing, according to the NYPD.
Police sources said the fatal fight broke out after Charles allegedly made anti-cop comments and Bailey confronted him over them.
Bailey — a hardworking steamfitter remembered by family and friends as a “Canarsie legend” for his athletic prowess — was pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center.
“He looked out for me,” said Jaylin. “He was my advisor and coach. He always made sure I did the right thing.”
It’s not clear if prosecutors renewed their request for bail in last year’s case once the charges were upped to attempted murder in March. Brooklyn Judge Matthew Sciarrino presided over Charles’ arraignment on the new indictment in July.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn DA’s office said prosecutors made a bail request “at the appropriate time” when Charles was initially arraigned on the assault indictment, but wouldn’t comment further.
Jason Goldman, a prominent New York City attorney, said it would have been moot for prosecutors to ask for higher bail as there was only a “slight upgrade” in the charges, from a class C to a class B felony.
“Given that he returned to court for a year, and given only the slight upgrade in charges, a judge would not have granted a new bail request,” Goldman said. “Hence, the reason why the DA likely didn’t make a renewed application.”
Defense lawyer Mark Bederow, a former Manhattan prosecutor, disagreed, saying the new indictment including the attempted murder charge should have warranted higher bail.
“Stabbing someone on the subway is very serious and certainly would warrant setting bail,” Bederow said. “And the fact that he’d been arrested on a lesser offense on a complaint and then indicted by a grand jury on a higher offense certainly would warrant additional bail.”
Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and now a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice agreed higher bail on the pending case was warranted.
“So you can stab somebody in 2021 and be out in the streets to stab somebody else a year or less later?” Giacalone railed. “To me that doesn’t make any sense.”
A spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration defended Earle-Gargan’s decision to release Charles without bail at his arraignment on the original assault charge in 2021.
“Since the bias at a defendant’s arraignment is towards some form of release and not pretrial detention, and with the proviso that any type of restraint is the least imposing — in this case supervised release — this defendant met the burden and had been returning for his court dates,” Lucian Chalfen said in a statement.
“The information before the judge for her to make a decision on bail would be more than the basic facts outlined in the complaint.”
Earle-Gargan, is a former Brooklyn prosecutor who was elected to the bench in 2020. A St. John’s Law School graduate, she previously worked as a law secretary for a pair of State Supreme Court justices in the borough.
Detectives’ Endowment Association President Paul DiGiacomo took aim at New York’s lenient bail reform laws following news of Charles’ release after the July 2021 incident.
“The laws in New York protect the criminals and leave the law abiding citizens tossed aside to be victimized over and over again,” said DiGiacomo.
“Albany politicians won’t make the necessary changes to their failures because they don’t have to deal with the violence in our neighborhoods and on the subway. For the public who Detectives are trying to keep safe it’s a different story,” he added.
In court Thursday, prosecutor Ari Rottenberg said Charles was caught on surveillance video during last week’s attack on Bailey, and that facial-recognition software was used to identify him.
Defense lawyer Roy Wasserman argued that New York, unlike other states, has disallowed courts to consider “dangerousness in bail application analysis” as part of bail reform measures.
He said his client had shown up in court for his past appearances and would again.
“He is shown up to court 10 times while I represented him,” Wasserman said. “He comes to my office. He answers my texts, answers and returns my phone calls. In fact, I had lunch with him last week at my office in the conference room. We sat, we had pizza together.
“There is nothing to indicate that my client is not reliable,” he said.
Wasserman also claimed that the face-recognition technology used by police in the case “has been found by experts in other jurisdictions to be racially biased,” he said.
Judge Inga O’Neale was not convinced and ordered that Charles be held without bail pending a return court appearance on Oct. 11.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Khristina Narizhnaya and Priscilla DeGregory
