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Homeless Man Who Stabbed Teen to Death in Internet Cafe Cleared of Charges

By Trevor Kapp | May 15, 2017 2:37pm
 Yangpu Fan, 19, of Flushing, was stabbed in the torso after a fight over these computers at K&D internet cafe, police said.
Yangpu Fan, 19, of Flushing, was stabbed in the torso after a fight over these computers at K&D internet cafe, police said.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp

QUEENS — The homeless man who fatally knifed a teen who’d been pestering him to give up his seat at an internet cafe in Flushing last month has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a Queens grand jury.

Paul Kim, 51, was acting in self-defense when he stabbed Yangpu Fan, 19, inside the K&D Internet Cafe on Union Street near 88th Avenue on April 26, the panel ruled.

Fan and his friends demanded Kim give up his seat at a computer so they could sit together, but he refused to budge, the café’s manager, Paul Chen, told DNAinfo.

Kim then pulled out the knife and slashed Fan, according to police.

The victim took himself to New York Hospital-Queens for a wound to the torso, but he succumbed to his injuries.

Chen was ordered held on $75,000 bail on manslaughter charges at his arraignment, but his lawyer, Ken Finkelman, insisted throughout that his client acted in self-defense, telling DNAinfo the teens "hit [Kim] in the head and slammed him over a computer."

"This is really a clear case," Finkelman said. "He’s not responsible."