title: “Man Is Fatally Stabbed at Manhattan Homeless Shelter - The New York T…” url: “https://archive.is/umzFN”
Another man was arrested in connection with the attack, which occurred at a shelter in Washington Heights for people dealing with mental illness and substance abuse.
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Sept. 28, 2026Updated 5:46 p.m. ET
A 33-year-old man was stabbed to death during an argument in a Manhattan homeless shelter on Sunday morning, the Police Department said.
Police officers responding to a 911 call at about 11:50 a.m. found the man, Nicholas Ahmad, with multiple stab wounds to the chest at the Fort Washington Men’s Shelter in Washington Heights. He died at a nearby hospital in Harlem, the authorities said.
On Sunday afternoon, the police arrested and charged Javed Tyghter, 29, with murder in connection with the stabbing. The police listed the shelter, located at 651 West 168th Street, as the address of both men.
A spokesperson for the police did not answer questions about what had led to the stabbing.
The Fort Washington shelter, which serves roughly 200 men, houses people dealing with mental illness and substance abuse. There are about three dozen such shelters in the city, and they are often chaotic places. A 2024 investigation by The New York Times found that violence and disorder were commonplace in these facilities, which are known as MICA, or “mental illness and chemical abuse,” shelters.
More than 1,400 fights were recorded at the facilities from 2018 to 2021, with more than half resulting in “serious injury,” the investigation found. In 2023, a man randomly stabbed two men who were sleeping at a MICA shelter in Brooklyn, and a third at a nearby subway station. The man pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
The most recently available date on violence at the Fort Washington Men’s Shelter is from 2022. In one six-week stretch between March and April of that year, the shelter logged at least eight violent episodes, according to city incident reports.
Those episodes included a resident cutting another resident on the arm and the lip; a resident hitting another in the head with a belt that had a metal lock attached to it; residents attacking security guards, in one instance with a trash can and in another with a thermos; a resident throwing a chair through a window; and a resident attempting to sexually assault another resident.
Officials at the agencies that oversee the MICA shelters — the New York City Department of Social Services and the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance — did not immediately respond to a request for more current statistics on violence at the facilities.
Project Renewal, the nonprofit that operates the Fort Washington shelter under contract with the city, said that it was cooperating with the police and could not comment on the ongoing investigation of an episode it called “tragic.”
The Department of Social Services said in a statement that it was working with the police to investigate the attack and “conduct a security assessment of the building to determine whether any critical improvements can be implemented.”
Former shelter workers have described the MICA facilities as generally poorly equipped to handle the complex needs of the mentally ill, with violent and disruptive patients often getting bounced by shelter operators from one shelter to another without receiving effective help.
Amy Julia Harris contributed reporting.
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