A homeless man was stabbed in a wooded area of Freeport where three others died in the past six years, including another homeless man who was murdered, New York State police said.
The victim, 44-year-old Narciso Cruz-Vazquez, was found suffering from stab wounds in a homeless encampment in woodlands just north of Sunrise Highway and just west of Meadowbrook State Parkway shortly after 4 p.m. Monday, police said. The victim was taken to Nassau University Medical Center, where he is being treated for his injuries.
“He was stabbed multiple times in the torso and is in stable condition,” State Trooper Frank Bandiero told the Press. “He has lived along the Meadowbrook Parkway for years.”
The encampment is a short walk from a Freeport village day laborer hiring site, where undocumented immigrants gather to wait for temporary employment. Two homeless men were found dead in the same woods six months apart in 2012 and a third homeless man was convicted of killing one of them.
Henry Martinez-Ramos was sentenced last year to 25 years to life in prison for stabbing to death 21-year-old Ermis Alonzo, with whom he had an ongoing dispute, in October 2012. Martinez-Ramos, who also lived in the same woods, hid the victim’s body under a pile of railroad ties next to the adjacent train tracks, authorities have said.
That case came after 33-year-old Jose Garrido-Lobo was found dead in those woods in March 2012, but investigators did not suspect foul play, police said at the time.
And in 2009, another homeless man, 65-year-old Miguel Angel Sanche, died when his shanty caught fire in an encampment less than a mile north of the latest incident in the same stretch of woods.
