Cops make arrest in East Village murder from July

BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Police on Tuesday announced an arrest in the death of an Uptown man this summer who was found on an East Village sidewalk with a fatal chest wound.

On Monday, Oneil Brown, 42, from the Bronx was arrested and charged with murder.

This past July 14, around 6 a.m., police responded to a 911 call of an unconscious man lying on the sidewalk at First Avenue and Sixth Street. Marvin Bellamy, 37, from the Frederick Douglass Houses on the Upper West Side, was transported by E.M.S. ambulance to Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The next day cops classified the case as a homicide.

At the time, it was unclear exactly what the murder weapon was — a gun or some sort of sharp object. The victim had a “puncture wound” to the chest, police said, but could not narrow it down beyond that. The Office of Chief Medical Examiner would determine the cause of death.

Some speculated back then that the weapon was a “thin implement,” like an ice pick.

On Tuesday, the police spokesperson said that a responding E.M.S. medic initially had “jumped to” the conclusion that the man had been shot in the chest with a gun but that others subsequently thought it could have been a knife.

The police spokesperson said of the victim and the suspect, “They did exchange words. He did have a conversation with the victim and it led to a physical altercation. But we don’t know what was said or if they knew each other.”

As for exactly where the two were when the fatal wound was inflicted, the spokesperson said police don’t know. While the victim was found lying in front of the McDonald’s at First Avenue and Sixth Street, detectives working the crime scene checked surveillance cameras at Stromboli Pizza at St. Mark’s Place two blocks north of there.

During the crime-scene investigation, the areas around the McDonald’s and the pizzeria were both cordoned off with police tape.

The police spokesperson said she did not have any updated information on the type of weapon, but that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner should have that from presumably having completed an autopsy by now. O.C.M.E. did not immediately respond to a request for information.