A spare mattress was at the center of an argument that led to the stabbing death of a Bronx landlord Tuesday morning, witnesses and police said.
George Shim, 37, had just finished his shift driving a livery cab at 2 a.m. when he found his fiancé and basement tenant arguing over a spare bed, Shim’s fiancé told the Daily News. He rushed downstairs to settle the scuffle in his Wakefield home on East 222nd St, and that's when the tenant allegedly stabbed Shim in the torso with a kitchen knife.
"He was running back up the stairs - I saw the knife sticking out," Shim's fiancé, who declined to give her name, told the paper. "He collapsed right on the steps."
Paramedics took Shim to Jacobi Medical Center, where doctors pronounced him dead at around 2:15 a.m., cops said.
The mêlée reportedly began a few hours earlier when the tenant woke Shim's fiancé to complain that she denied him the extra mattress.
Shim’s fiancé told the News that she explained to the tenant that she needed the bed because her son was staying over. The man didn’t believe her.
"I heard him saying, 'She's a f------ liar,'" the fiancé told the paper.
A shouting match began and the argument intensified when the fiancé called the neighbor a “monkey face.” reports the News.
The two were still arguing when Shim came home from work.
"My boyfriend heard him cussing me," Shim's fiancé said. "He told him, 'Why are you disrespecting my woman?'"
Shim went downstairs to confront the man, but ended up wobbling up the stairs moments later with a stab wound. He was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. Cops apprehended the suspect.
"He's a good person, kind, always helping everybody," Shim's teary-eyed fiancé told the News. "He's always laughing, making people laugh."
The father of three teenagers from another marriage was described as a jokester who was friendly and stayed away from arguments.
"He would come and run a lot of jokes with you," 53-year-old Robert Powell, Shim’s friend from Wakefield, told the News. "He's not a troublemaker. He would say 'hi' and go on his way. I was shocked. It's so sad."
