Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered a full review after an accused jogger killer rejected as unfit by the Marines and NYPD was found working at a Brooklyn public school.
Sayed Mohassib, 27, had already been discharged from the Marines as psychologically unfit and turned away when he tried to rejoin the NYPD. Yet the city Department of Education still employed him around children as a teacher’s aide at PS 200 in Brooklyn until he was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of jogger Katie Suarez.
Mamdani said Monday that student safety comes first and that he had directed his team to examine how this happened. The DOE later said Mohassib had been terminated. Parents at the school and local elected officials are asking the same hard question: how did a man the Marines and the police would not keep end up in a classroom building.
The New York Post reported that Mohassib worked for the DOE as hourly support staff starting in 2019 and was listed as a paraprofessional, a teacher’s aide, at PS 200 beginning in 2024. The school sits about three blocks from the Gravesend waterfront promenade where Suarez, a 28-year-old bank teller, was killed while jogging on October 30.
Mohassib’s path into the school system did not start clean. He served roughly six weeks with the NYPD before leaving for the armed forces. In 2022 the Marines discharged him for being psychologically unfit. When he later tried to return to the Police Department, the NYPD refused, citing erratic behavior, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In 2024, the same year he appeared on DOE rolls as a paraprofessional, cops were called to his family’s home after he allegedly threatened to “chop up” his parents, law-enforcement sources and SeeThroughNY material cited in the reporting show. He had no criminal record at the time of the October attack, local officials later noted. That did not mean the warning signs were hidden.
A source close to the situation put the contradiction in plain terms.
"How does someone who was too crazy to serve in both the Marines and the NYPD end up working around children in a public school? This isn’t some nut job who quietly retired from the police force and took a job at Best Buy. The DOE has some serious questions to answer."
Suarez was stabbed twice in the neck on a path along the Belt Parkway during what authorities have described as an apparent random attack. She had spoken with her father by phone minutes earlier. He later found her bloodied and dying and asked a cyclist to call 911.
Mohassib was arrested Saturday, November 7, 2026, and charged with murder. A criminal complaint says he told police he brought a knife to the park because “people were going to come and kill his family.” Court documents describe surveillance video allegedly showing him returning home drenched in blood and say he told officers he tried to clean blood splattered on the walls of his Bensonhurst bedroom. He left the 62nd precinct after being charged.
A candlelight vigil for Suarez was held November 4 on Rutherford Place in Brooklyn. By Monday, November 9, the employment question had reached City Hall.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference at DSNY headquarters, Mamdani framed the response around student safety and personnel action already underway.
"I have directed my team to conduct a full review of this matter, underlying the importance of the fact that nothing is more paramount than the safety of our students, and we know that when it comes to this specific case, New York City public schools has suspended the individual and is moving to terminate his employment pending the outcome of this case."
A DOE representative went further on the employment status and pledged cooperation with police.
"The safety of our students is our very top priority, and as such, this individual has been terminated. We are supporting the NYPD in their investigation however is needed."
Termination after a murder charge is the bare minimum. It does not explain the hiring, the continued placement near kids, or what background checks and fitness standards the DOE actually applied when the Marines and the NYPD had already drawn a brighter line.
City Councilwoman Kayla Santosuosso posted a joint statement on X with state Sen. Andrew Gounardes and Assemblyman-elect Chris McCreight. They called the employment revelation the issue that cannot be waved away.
"[Suarez’s] murderer was evidently a mentally ill disturbed man with no criminal record, but who was an ex-NYPD officer and ex-Marine who was discharged from the military on psychiatric grounds. Troublingly though, at the time of the attack, he was a DOE employee, serving as a teacher’s aide in a public school. This last revelation raises serious questions about how he came to be employed in a local public school and warrants a full investigation into the circumstances of his hiring and continued employment."
Parents at PS 200 were already connecting the dots. School mom Victoria Bulux said the news made her “a little nervous” and that she was “in shock because you would think [students] are safe in school.” She added that background should matter before someone is assigned near children. Her son put it more simply: “I feel unsafe.”
A 48-year-old mother of a first-grader said friends’ kids remembered Mohassib as quiet, talking to himself, “in his own world.” She worried aloud about what might have happened inside the building and said families want to know how background checks work going forward.
One PS 200 coworker told reporters, “I’m not shocked,” and would not elaborate. Another said staff had been told not to speak because of the open investigation.
The timeline is not subtle. DOE work in 2019. Brief NYPD stint. Marines discharge in 2022 for psychological unfitness. NYPD refusal over erratic behavior. A 2024 family-home police call over an alleged “chop up” threat against his parents. Paraprofessional listing at a Brooklyn elementary school the same year. Then a fatal stabbing three blocks away in October 2025’s calendar stretch into the November charging and the mayor’s Monday review order.
Two institutions built around discipline, weapons, and high-stress screening, the Marine Corps and the NYPD, concluded Mohassib did not belong. New York City’s school system still put him in a role serving students. Mamdani’s review and the DOE’s termination arrived only after a young woman was dead and the accused killer’s employment became public.
Parents are right to ask what the city knew, when it knew it, and why military and police red flags did not block a school paycheck. A full review that ends in press lines about “top priority” safety will not be enough if hiring rules still treat classroom access as a softer standard than a Marine barracks or a precinct locker room.
When the armed forces and the police both say a man is too unstable to serve, city schools should not be the place that still says yes, and families should not have to learn that lesson after a jogger is murdered three blocks from the building.
