Video of Stabbing in Tribeca Said to Show a Different Story of Attack

On the Jay Street side of 335 Greenwich Street, a police officer watches over the scene where security video is said to show a fight took place, leaving one man with stab wounds. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Editor's note: An updated version of this story can be found here [1].

The events behind a stabbing that took place on a Tribeca street last Saturday night appear to be different than originally reported by police.

Security camera video from the Jay Street entrance to 345 Greenwich Street shows what looks like the victim of an attack, knifing one of his attackers in the leg as he is being punched and kicked by two men, according to a resident of the building who saw the video, now in the hands of police.

Police first reported that a 19-year-old man was stabbed three times in the leg during a robbery. Police confirmed on Wednesday that James Norwood, a 19-year-old Upper West Side resident, was arrested the next day and charged with assault, but could not confirm other reported details of the story. They also have not confirmed that Norwood was the person who was stabbed.

The resident, who asked not to be identified, said the video shows four men fighting as they walked down Jay Street from Greenwich until they reached near the Jay Street doorway. One of the four walked away while two others attacked the man on the ground. One of the men fighting, he said, “starts acting like he’s stabbed and then goes back to beating the guy on the ground. The two who had been attacking the man, he said, walked toward Greenwich Street and turned south. In the meantime, the person on the ground, he said, “gets up, takes a bag, and runs across Jay and north on Greenwich.”

The resident, who happened to be having dinner nearby at Salaam Bombay, 319 Greenwich St., said a waiter told him that someone had been stabbed in the leg and the man was picked up by ambulance in front of the restaurant. Police said he was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

“It’s hard to know what this was,” said the resident. “Did they know each other? And who’s the victim, who’s the perp?”