People tried to get to know him: an 83-year-old homeless man that some residents of Chinatown knew as Uncle Kwok. But he kept to himself, they said, never wanting to talk about what landed him on the streets.
Uncle Kwok, whose given name was Chuen Kwok, was bludgeoned to death Saturday as he slept in the familiar alcove where he had sought a degree of security. He was among four homeless men beaten to death with a 3-foot, 15-pound metal bar in attacks that took place just after 1:30 a.m. on a chilly night.
Rudy Rodriguez Santos, a homeless 24-year-old man with a history of violence, was arrested two blocks away and charged with their murders.
Homelessness in New York is not always fleeting or anonymous. A homeless person can become a fixture in a neighborhood, accepted as part of the local community fabric, and cared for — a recipient of spare change, castoff clothes or the leftovers from a meal. Kwok seems to have been that kind of character, accepted and liked by those who encountered and helped him.
“There are many homeless men around, but for some reason he caught my eye,” said Kim Mui, who brought incense to his alcove Monday to mourn him. “He’s such an elderly man,” she remembered thinking when she first met him. “He’s not bothering anybody. He’s so quiet. He just seemed so sweet.”
It was Kwok’s murder that led to the police finding and arresting Santos. A couple returning home saw Kwok being beaten with the metal bar, his blanket wrapped around him. They called 911, and then flagged down a passing police car and helped officers comb the neighborhood until Santos was found.
Kwok appeared to have been the last victim of the night.
Police said Nazario A. Vazquez Villegas, 54, had been killed minutes earlier, as was Anthony L. Manson, 49, whose last known address was the general delivery address of Manhattan’s main post office, a place where many homeless people get their mail. The fourth man, found at East Broadway, had not yet been identified Monday.
All were killed by repeated blows to the head, resulting in skull fractures and brain injury, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Monday. A fifth man, David Hernandez, 55, was left in critical condition.
Around 2 a.m. Saturday, Santos was arrested after a police officer spotted him near the intersection of Mulberry and Canal Streets, police said. Fresh blood and hair clung to the metal bar he was carrying, police said.
On Monday, at the spot where he was killed, someone had placed a photo of Kwok, looking up as if to answer a question, amid bouquets of flowers. “A polite, humble, gentleman,” it read, under his name, which is sometimes spelled Kok, and the years of his birth and death, 1935 to 2019.
“Our Friend and Brother,” read another note, along with a translation in Chinese.
As people paid their respects Monday morning, or gathered for a nearby vigil led by local elected officials, no family members of Kwok appeared. But Mui, her hair askew and in dark sunglasses, spoke lovingly of him to anyone who asked, taking on the role of surrogate daughter.
She recounted that she had met Kwok two decades ago and had visited his apartment, when he still had a home. He had been an old friend of her mother’s family, known to her as Uncle Kwok, and he had lived in an old tenement building on East Houston Street with a bathtub in the living room.
“I remember him standing in the living room,” she said. “He was wearing a tank top and he was smiling.”
She said she did not recognize Kwok at first when she befriended him about a month ago on the streets, helping him to get food and chatting with him in Cantonese. Then her mother told her he was the same family friend who had been living on the streets and tended to avoid people he knew.
Little was known about his background, Mui said. He was from Hong Kong and spoke no English. He told people he had no wife or children. When he was younger, he had traveled widely, looking for restaurant work. Mui said she did not know how he had become homeless.
A clue may have been in the bottles of Chinese-branded Green Bamboo Leaf Liquor that restaurant workers said he sometimes carried with him when he came in to eat. He liked to drink, though he was never boisterous or ill-behaved when he did.
He had the money to pay for some of his meals, perhaps from panhandling. Andy Wang, 45, a manager at the Taiwan Pork Chop House, said Kwok would often sit at the same table by the kitchen and order a pork chop over rice for $5.75.
He would sit for an hour, “eating very slowly,” Wang said, adding that it seemed he had a problem chewing. “He never really spoke,” he added. “He wouldn’t need to say anything.”
At Great N.Y. Noodletown, he would order the roast duck. “When he was too dirty and we were busy, we wouldn’t let him come in,” one waiter said. But when he did eat there, the waiter added, he would always leave a $1 tip.
For other meals, he took leftovers from people in the neighborhood who looked out for him.
One neighbor, Julie, 39, who declined to give her last name, dropped off a purple mum and a sketch of Kwok at the memorial.
“I’d bring him leftovers because my mother cooks way too much, and sometimes we’d go out with the family and have restaurant leftovers, so I’d drop them off,” she told The Daily News. “He would take them and immediately thank me.”
Kwok never asked for much. On Sept. 23, Mui visited Kwok and stepped into a nearby bakery and bought him a few items. “Just one,” Kwok said. “I’m full.” It was his usual response, she said.
With autumn temperatures beginning to drop, Mui said she had brought Kwok some shoes Friday night. The next morning she heard four homeless people had been murdered. She said she prayed that Kwok was not among them.
On Monday, she came to mourn him, holding three sticks of incense. She bowed in front of the makeshift memorial. Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, Mui and other people from the neighborhood followed. Each placed incense sticks inside a tall cup. Tall candles burned.
“Uncle Kwok. It’s Ms. Mui. I hope you remember me,” Mui said in Cantonese, through sobs. “I gave you the roast pork. I met you when I was a little girl.”
“I’ll never forget you,” she said.
This article originally appeared in
.