Authorities say a dispute at a New York City deli over who was in line first to get a sandwich took a deadly turn and ended in the fatal stabbing of a postal worker and the arrest of a 24-year-old transgender woman.
Police say the stabbing happened at a deli in Harlem before 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 2.
Officers arrived to find USPS worker Ray Hodge III with multiple stab wounds to his torso, arms, back, and neck. First responders rushed the 36-year-old to a local hospital, where he died.
Authorities have charged 24-year-old Jaia Cruz with Hodge’s murder.
Witnesses told local news outlets that the stabbing happened after Hodge reportedly entered the deli and placed his order, prompting an objection from Cruz. She allegedly cut the mailman who had just taken a break to get a sandwich in line.
“He was in the store counting his money to check how much he had to order. She came in after him and she had bags probably from the supermarket. She put her bags by the coffee machine and she came to order,” an employee told The New York Post.
Janet Rich, who was at the deli buying coffee, overheard the shouting match between Hodge and Cruz.
“It was over a sandwich,” Rich told the New York Daily News. “It was, ‘I was next. No, I was next.’ It was for nothing.”
Rich said she and another customer tried to stop the fight, but the confrontation only escalated.
“I got in between them — twice,” said Rich. There was another woman with dreadlocks [who] said, ‘Don’t do this, you have a good job. Let this go.’”
Hodge reportedly “took off his coat and said, ‘You want to stab me?'” Rich said. “I picked up his coat and put it back on. I was trying to prevent the fight.”
Rich added that Cruz, who stood well over six feet tall, was “foaming at the mouth” and appeared to be high on drugs during the argument.
“I was in the middle and he was in front of me and she came from behind me and spit in his face,” a deli worker told the New York Post.
The dispute came to a deadly end when Cruz allegedly pulled out a steak knife and stabbed Hodge at least three times, according to witness accounts. Authorities recovered a knife at the scene.
“She started stabbing him, and the next thing you know, blood was everywhere,” Rich said.
A friend of Cruz who spoke to ABC 7 Eyewitness News anonymously told the outlet that the stabbing is very out of character for Cruz and believes Cruz took drastic measures in self-defense.
“She’s a nice young lady. She is not the type that just come out in the street an attacking people,” the friend said. “This is just a bad neighborhood. What happened — I have no idea because I was not around yet. I don’t know, but I do know, if she said it was in self-defense, it was in self-defense.”
But Cruz reportedly has a documented criminal history involving knife violence.
According to the New York Post, she was arrested five times before her most recent arrest for Hodge’s slaying.
In 2020, she was arrested after she was caught waving an open box cutter at someone and threatening to “cut” that person.
Two weeks after that incident, she robbed a man at knifepoint after she and another friend invited the victim to “hang out.”
Those who knew Hodge said the news of his death was shocking.
“It’s scary. The man is on his job, they come to my building every day, and just like that, he’s gone,” Uzo Guchisachi, a Harlem resident, said.
A USPS worker who also knew the 36-year-old called him a “nice young man.”
Local community activist Dr. Iesha Sekou talked about how Hodge’s mother reacted to her son’s death.
“A mother never, never expects to bury her child,” Sekou told CBS News. “She’s still in a little shock. She just said I didn’t believe that my son would be dead. And I don’t think any mother is ready for this.”
