By Alexandra Cheney and Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers
WEST VILLAGE — The NYPD has no leads in the investigation into the fatal stabbing of two men on the 2 train this weekend in Greenwich Village.
As of Tuesday morning, police were struggling to find video surveillance footage of the subway stabber who killed Darnell Morel and Ricardo Williams, both 24 of Brooklyn. There are no security cameras at the Christopher Street station, where the killer is believed to have fled the train Sunday morning. There were no station agents there, either.
"This definitely should have been recorded on surveillance camera," Norman Seabrook, chairman of the MTA's safety and security committee, told the New York Times. "Post 9/11, the terrorist bombings that just occurred in Moscow, the two murders that just occurred plus other incidents that continue to occur in the subway system, we cannot wait any longer."
The MTA's watchdog agency blasted the authority earlier this month for allowing a security contract with Lockheed Martin to languish in red tape. The program would install security cameras throughout the system and streamline emergency response.
"There is no definitive word from the MTA on what the next step will be with respect to a security program," said the report from the Permanent Citizen's Advisory Committee. "The lapse in moving forward with this initiative is inexcusable."
Morel and Williams were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where they were pronounced dead. A third man, identified in multiple reports as Mark Joseph, 23, also from Brooklyn, was at St. Vincent's with stab wounds to his arm and neck.
The men's bodies were retrieved from the Houston Street station, but police reportedly believe the attacker fled from the Christopher Street subway station at Seventh Avenue South. The 2 train was running local at the time of the incident.
A security guard at The Monster on Grove Street just south of the Christopher Street station said his bar has two surveillance cameras that record footage 15 feet in either direction on the street, but that police had not yet requested tapes from the morning of the incident.
“The police will probably come today, but I’m surprised that they haven’t come,” said an employee there, Seth Mrowka.
A shopkeeper at Village Cigars at the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue South added that police had come to view his store's surveillance video, but that the shop’s system was broken.
“The cops were all here when I came and opened up my shop” at 8 a.m. on Sunday, said Dylan Sigh. “But my video system is completely out.”
On Sunday, detectives entered a CVS store in the area to view surveillance footage, but didn’t come away with anything useful, the Times reported.
The incident began after a group of 10 men, heading home from a night out at the Bryant Park Hotel, boarded a downtown 2 train at 42nd Street at about 5 a.m, the New York Post reported.
When they got to 14th Street, one of the men apparently tossed a bag of garbage out of the subway car that accidentally hit another man, who pulled a knife and attacked.
The men reportedly apologized and tried to make amends with the assailant before he stabbed them.
Dozens of tributes to Morel have appeared on his Facebook page since the news of his death on Sunday afternoon.
A woman identifying herself as Morel’s wife on Facebook wrote, “a life full of beauty a life full of hope taken from my arms now nothinq left to hold in my heart there is a hole impossible to fill still lookinq for answers…”
She added in an earlier post, “i juss keep callinq yhur vmail to hear yhur voice one more time im not ready to let you qo.”
Morel's mother, Florence Kwiatkowski, told the Post that her son was stabbed “over nonsense.”
"He would be the one to put peace to things,” she said.
