THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORKTUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019 N Awho brought incense to his alcove
on Monday to mourn him. “He’s
such an elderly man,” she remem-
bered thinking when she first met
him. “He’s not bothering anybody.
He’s so quiet. He just seemed so
sweet.”
It was Mr. Kwok’s murder that
led to the police finding and arrest-
ing Mr. Santos. A couple returning
home saw Mr. Kwok being beaten
with the metal bar, his blanket
wrapped around him. They called
911, and then flagged down a pass-
ing police car and helped officers
comb the neighborhood until Mr.
Santos was found.
Mr. Kwok appeared to have
been the last victim of the night.
Police said Nazario A. Vazquez
Villegas, 54, had been killed min-
utes earlier, as was Anthony L.
Manson, 49, whose last known ad-
dress was the general delivery ad-
dress of Manhattan’s main post of-
fice, a place where many homeless
people get their mail. The fourth
man, found at East Broadway, had
not yet been identified on Monday.
All were killed by repeated
blows to the head, resulting in
skull fractures and brain injury,
the Office of the Chief Medical Ex-
aminer said Monday. A fifth man,
David Hernandez, 55, was left in
critical condition.
At around 2 a.m. on Saturday,
Mr. Santos was arrested after a po-
lice officer spotted him near the in-
tersection of Mulberry and Canal
Streets, police said. Fresh blood
and hair clung to the metal bar he
was carrying, the police said.
On Monday, at the spot where
he was killed, someone had placed
a photo of Mr. Kwok, looking up as
if to answer a question, amid bou-
quets 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 transla-
tion in Chinese.
As people paid their respects on
Monday morning, or gathered for
a nearby vigil led by local elected
officials, no family members of Mr.
Kwok appeared. But Ms. Mui, her
hair askew and in dark sun-
glasses, spoke lovingly of him to
anyone who asked, taking on the
role of surrogate daughter.
In an interview, she recounted
that she had met Mr. 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 did not recognize Mr.
Kwok at first when she befriended
him about a month ago on the
streets, helping him to get food
and chatting with him in Canton-
ese. 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, Ms. 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. Ms.
Mui said she did not know how he
had become homeless.
A clue may have been in the bot-
tles of Chinese-branded Green
Bamboo Leaf Liquor that restau-
rant workers said he sometimes
carried with him when he came in
to eat. He liked to drink, though he
was never boisterous or ill-be-
haved when he did.
He had some money, perhaps
from panhandling. Andy Wang, 45,
a manager at the Taiwan Pork
Chop House, said Mr. 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,” Mr. Wang said, add-
ing that it seemed he had a prob-
lem 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,” onewaiter said. But when he did eat
there, the waiter added, he would
always leave a $1 tip.
For other meals, he took left-
overs from people in the neighbor-
hood who looked out for him.
Caifeng Lin, 57, said she often
stopped to bring Mr. Kwok home-
made rice noodles as she came
through Chinatown to run errands
from her home in Sunset Park.
Ms. Lin broke down in tears as
she explained that Mr. Kwok was a
“very good person, a very honest
person,” who would often refuse
offers of food or money. “If he was-
n’t hungry, he would tell you,” she
said in Mandarin.
Mr. Kwok never asked for much.
On Sept. 23, Ms. Mui visited Mr.
Kwok and stepped into a nearbybakery and bought him a few
items. “Just one,” Mr. Kwok said.
“I’m full.” It was his usual re-
sponse, she said.
With autumn temperatures be-
ginning to drop, Ms. Mui said she
had brought Mr. Kwok pork buns
on Friday. She had offered to get
him some lotion for a skin condi-
tion, but he said nothing helped.
She planned to bring him shoes
and a hat and scarf.
The next morning she heard
four homeless people had been
murdered. She said she prayed
that Mr. Kwok was not among
them.
On Monday, she came to mourn
him, holding three sticks of in-
cense. She bowed in front of the
makeshift memorial. Assembly-
woman Yuh-Line Niou, Ms. Mui
and other people from the neigh-
borhood followed. Each placed in-
cense sticks inside a tall cup. Vo-
tive candles burned.
“Uncle Kwok. It’s Ms. Mui. I
hope you remember me,” Ms. Mui
said in Cantonese, through sobs. “I
gave you the roast pork buns. I
met you when I was a little girl.”
“I’ll never forget you,” she said.Chinatown Mourns ‘Uncle Kwok,’ Whose Quiet Life Met a Brutal End
From Page AChuen Kwok, 83, was known
in Chinatown, where people
sometimes brought him food. GABRIELA BHASKAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESWorkers, residents
and shoppers recall a
familiar presence.
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