Arizona man who died after attacking NYC employee was suspected killer
Aug 6, 2018, 5:26 PM | Updated: 5:27 pm
Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side (Yelp photo)
(Yelp photo)
PHOENIX — An Arizona man who died on Sunday shortly after jumping out of a freezer and attacking an employee with a kitchen knife at a Manhattan restaurant was a suspected cold-case killer who had just been released from jail in Boston.
The 54-year-old man from Cave Creek, later identified as Carlton Henderson, shouted “Away, Satan!” and grabbed the knife after an employee opened the walk-in freezer at Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side, the New York Times reported.
Employees then wrestled the man to the floor and disarmed him. The man allegedly lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest during the struggle, the Times reported.
He was pronounced dead shortly after he was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.
No restaurant workers or patrons were injured. It was still unknown how Henderson got into the freezer and how long he had been there.
Henderson was facing murder charges in the 1988 shooting deaths of 26-year-old William Medina and 22-year-old Antonio Dos Reis.
He got out of jail last Wednesday when a judge threw out key evidence in the pending double-murder case and ordered him released on his own recognizance.
Judge Janet Sanders said Henderson’s 1993 statements suggesting his involvement in the 1988 killings were inadmissible because he and investigators had an understanding that they couldn’t be used against him.
Henderson was looking to trade the information for a reduction in his 15-year prison sentence on drug and gun charges, Sanders wrote, and investigators treated him as a cooperating witness – not a target or a suspect – in his 55 hours of questioning.
Prosecutors argued such an informal immunity agreement, known as a proffer, would have been made in writing and no corroborating paperwork has been found.
Police arrested Henderson in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 2017 after bullets from the Boston killings were matched to a gun recovered in a fatal shooting in Miami in 1993.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
