D.A. Bragg Drops Assault Case Against Chinatown Landlord Accused of Assault

The five month long legal nightmare of Brian Chin is over, as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped felony assault charges against the 32-year-old, who was accused of beating a Chinatown vagrant in August 2024.

Chin first came to public notice in February 2022. It came shortly after the savage headline grabbing murder of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee in her apartment at 111 Chrystie Street by a drug-addled homeless man, Assamad Nash. Nash is presently serving 30-years-to-life in prison.

Chin was Lee’s landlord, and like everyone who knew the creative producer and former art gallerist, he had nothing but the kindest words for her.

That the horrific slaying took place in Chin’s building, and the perpartrator was unknown to Lee, he was apparently a familiar figure in the Sara D. Roosevelt Park, across the street. Locals, including Chin have long complained of the homeless population that set up camps there and the open drug use.

A memorial that had been placed around a tree near the building where she lived was vandalized soon after it was erected, further enflamed tension in Chinatown. The Asian community, said Chin, “are tired of being attacked.”

Chin had already emerged as a critic of violence in Chinatown when he clashed with the homeless man in August, 2024. At one point in the confrontation, the man broke a chair and held a makeshift club and was menacing Chin.

They appeared to separate briefly then both returned to the scene of the original encounter and Chin pummeled the man with his fists, punching his opponent in the head at least six times causing him to fall to the ground. Prosecutors said the victim was beaten so badly he was unable to give cops his name.

Chin claimed self defense since the homeless man was menacing him with a club from the busted chair.

But Bragg charged the landlord with felony assault for his role in the violent clash near the corner of Chrystie and Grand streets. The victim was also hit with an assault charge in connection with the incident.

The corner is just steps from the building Chin owned and where Lee lived before she was murdered.

Even more than SDR Park itself across the street, the nearby Grand Street subway station is has become magnet of crime and general volatility, locals have complained.

Chin’s self defense claim was quickly picked up by conservative media. In September, Wai Wah Chin, founding president of the Chinese America Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote a scathing editorial for the New York Post headlined, “NYC landlord shows equal justice is a joke under DA Alvin Bragg.”

Writing of Chinatown since the Christina Yuna Lee murder, Wai Wah Chin wrote that “[Brian] Chin is in trouble because he allegedly ‘pummeled’ a violent vagrant who went at him with a wooden club that had a nail sticking out of it. She blamed Democratic policies on the local, state and federal level.

It is the second time in recent months Bragg has suffered a setback after bringing controversial assault charges against an individual who was engaged in an act that many saw as justifiable.

Daniel Penny, whose infamous chokehold resulted in the death of a homeless person, Jordan Neely, on a Manhattan subway, was acquitted of all charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in his death.

The incumbent DA remains a strong favorite to win re-election as local clubs in Manhattan begin pondering who to endorse this November. He remains in the crosshairs of newly installed president Donald Trump after Bragg successfully oversaw the then-presidential candidate convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying his business records. Trump remains infuriated by the conviction, which should help Bragg’s standing in a borough that is still likely to stay Democratic, even if some in Chinatown are shifting to the Republican ledger. The sole electoral district that Trump won in Manhattan happened to be a largely Chinese district in Knickerbocker Village.

Dropping the charges against Chin removes a case that right wing was rallying around.

“I am more angry than relieved,” Chin told the New York Post after Bragg decided to drop all charges. “Because this is something that never should have happened.”