By HARRY PARKER, ROCCO PARASCANDOLA | rparascandola@nydailynews.com and COLIN MIXSON | cmixsonpost@gmail.com | New York Article Archive
An advocate with a blossoming career influencing public policy was stabbed to death by an unhinged stranger while waiting for a Brooklyn bus early Monday on the way home from a wedding with his girlfriend, police sources said.
Ryan Carson worked as the senior solid waste campaign director at the nonprofit New York Public Interest Research Group. In 2021, separate from his NYPIRG work, he walked 350 miles across New York State to pressure then-governor Andrew Cuomo into legalizing safe drug injection sites throughout New York.
“One of the rising stars in our organization,” said a shaken Blair Horner, executive director of NYPIRG. “Wonderful person, hard-working, loud boisterous laugh. Everybody loved him.”
Carson, 32, spearheaded the 2021 “No OD NY” campaign. The initiative saw Carson and supporters walk from City Hall in Manhattan to Buffalo, with stops in Albany and other cities. He raised more than $20,000 for the campaign through a successful GoFundMe.
“I don’t think it’s at all an exaggeration to say that it’s a big loss for the city,” Ari Farrell, a friend of the victim, said of Carson’s slaying. “Anybody in his personal life will tell you he’s one of the best, the most moral, they’ve ever met.”
Carson cowrote a 2021 Daily News op-ed “New York falters on fentanyl and the opioid crisis,” which accused Cuomo of touting his handling of the COVID epidemic while ignoring the spread of fentanyl throughout the state.
He was waiting with his girlfriend at the B46 bus stop on Malcolm X Blvd. near Lafayette Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant after taking the Long Island Rail back from a wedding when a belligerent stranger started knocking over scooters parked nearby about 3:50 a.m., cops said.
“What are you looking at?” the man snarled at the startled couple before stabbing Carson twice in the chest, according to cops.
Medics rushed Carson to Kings County Hospital but he couldn’t be saved. He was about a mile from his apartment when he was stabbed.
His killer ran off and is on the loose.
Carson was set to turn 32 on Friday and friends were planning a birthday bash.
“There’s a big party on Saturday,” said Bucky Illingworth, 31, Carson’s roommate. “It was gonna be here and then we were gonna go for a hike in a week or two.”
Illingworth described Carson, who was 6-foot-4, as “the friendliest giant ever.”
“Always down to meet new friends, cook, always had a beer for you,” Illingworth added.
Following the fentanyl-related overdose death of a 1-year-old boy at a Bronx day care last month, NYC Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan called the synthetic opioid the most dangerous threat to New Yorkers’ health since COVID.
“I’m passionate about safe injection facilities because I’ve seen family members become addicted to opioids prescribed for pain caused by their occupations,” Carson wrote in the 2021 GoFundMe. “I’ve lost friends and family to the opioid epidemic, including my best friend, who died of a heroin overdose in 2016.”
On Point NYC would later open the first safe injection sites in the country in Washington Heights and East Harlem with the city’s blessing in November 2021. Safe injection sites remain illegal on the state and federal levels.
Carson enjoyed sports and attending concerts with friends.
“He was a huge basketball fan, Celtics fan, Red Sox fan,” Carson’s roommate said. “He loved music. We went to shows together all the time.”
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