Woof All:
Some newspaper articles from the time of the events in question.
Crafty Dog
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April 18, 2003, 11:21:15 AM ?
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New club slay suspect
Martial arts ace tried suicide after fatal fight
By BARBARA ROSS, MICHELE McPHEE and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Ching Chan, who cops said took part in club brawl that ended in bouncer's death Sunday, leaves Suffolk St. apartment yesterday. He was released from custody Tuesday.
Cops are close to arresting a new suspect - a martial arts expert - in the fatal stabbing of an East Village bouncer who died enforcing the city's smoking ban, sources said yesterday.
The suspect, who is a master of a vicious Filipino knife-fighting technique, attempted to kill himself after learning that the bouncer died Sunday, law enforcement sources told the Daily News.
The 31-year-old left a note to his parents confessing to the killing and saying he was drunk at the time, sources said.
"I was just trying to help out my friends," the note said, according to the sources.
The alleged killer is a pal of the Chinese brothers who were initially arrested in the slaying, but then released.
A law enforcement source said, "He was trained by martial arts experts to stab someone in one spot to kill."
The brothers are also schooled in the warrior art of Eskrima, in which knives are a key component, sources said. But the new suspect is believed to be the killer, and investigators were seeking search warrants last night to obtain more evidence, a source said. They were also looking to talk to his martial arts teacher.
Authorities told The News that the suspect was among 19 friends celebrating a birthday early Sunday at Guernica, a bar on Avenue B.
Dad ran Chinatown gang
The party included the children of notorious Chinatown gang leader Wing Yeung Chan.
The siblings - Ching Chan, 31, a medical student; Jonathan Chan, 29, a Wall St. banker, and Alice Ling Chan, 33, a bookkeeper - were arrested after the fatal stabbing but set free because of a lack of evidence.
Witnesses said members of the Chans' party repeatedly lit cigarettes inside the bar's downstairs club in violation of the city smoking ban. Several warnings from a deejay and a bouncer were ignored. So Dana Blake, 32, the bar's security chief and an imposing presence at 6-feet-5, 320 pounds, approached the group. When Blake attempted to remove Jonathan Chan from the bar, Chan's siblings and the knife-fighting ace pounced, law enforcement sources said. While the Chans were involved in the bloody scrum, sources said, it's now believed that the Eskrima expert was the one who plunged a knife into Blake's groin.
Blake, who lived in Astoria, Queens, died 11 hours after the attack despite surgeons' efforts to save his life.
No weapon was found. Investigators believe the suspect took the knife with him and rushed off to clean his blood-soaked clothing. He has been held in a psychiatric hospital since his suicide attempt, sources said.
Ivan Fisher, an attorney for the Chan brothers, has said his clients did not stab Blake.
The new details emerged as friends and relatives of Blake gathered for his wake in Queens. A chrome Cadillac hood ornament was attached to the outside of Blake's wooden coffin. "That's all he wanted was a Caddy," said St. Eyes Stroud, 27, a bouncer at Guernica.
While greeting friends of his slain brother, the Rev. Anthony Blake said, "We want justice."
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg called the Rev. Blake to express his condolences. Friends of Blake have blamed his death on Bloomberg's smoking ban.
At Guernica last night, more than 100 people showed up at a benefit to help Blake's family pay for the funeral. Club employees said they accepted at least $3,000 in donations.
With Nicole Bode and David Saltonstall
Originally published on April 18, 2003
Report to moderator 4.43.220.42
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April 19, 2003
On the Day of Bouncer's Funeral, a Martial Arts Student Is Charged
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
he killing was strange from the start, and has gotten only stranger. A bouncer stabbed to death, some said, because of the city's new ban on smoking in bars. A missing weapon. Three siblings arrested, then released, then revealed to be the children of a Chinatown gangster.
And yesterday, a new suspect, whom the police described as a suicidal young Filipino-American trained in a vicious Filipino martial art in which even beginners learn lethal knife thrusts.
The suspect, Isaias P. Umali II, was arraigned yesterday on charges of killing the bouncer, Dana Blake, with a single stab wound early Sunday morning at a downtown nightclub after a fight broke out over a burning cigarette.
Mr. Umali tried to commit suicide on Monday after learning that Mr. Blake had died, said George F. Brown, the chief of detectives.
The police made the arrest after learning that Mr. Umali had told someone about the stabbing and was in the hospital, Chief Brown said. In what was apparently intended as a suicide note, Mr. Umali made reference to his involvement in the crime, investigators said. The note was destroyed ? it was not clear how ? but someone who read it described it to the police, they said.
The police announced the arrest of Mr. Umali just two hours after eight brawny men struggled to carry the 6-foot-5 bouncer's casket up the stairs of the Humble Way Church of God in Christ in South Ozone Park, Queens, for his funeral.
On Thursday night, friends donated nearly $20,000 at a fund-raiser to pay the funeral expenses of Mr. Blake, known to bartenders and other nightclub workers across town as Shazam, said Brooke Hammerling, a friend who helped organize the event.
The arrest brought some satisfaction to investigators caught in a frustrating whodunit, with an international spotlight but no weapon, no witnesses to the stabbing itself and multiple sets of blood-soaked clothing.
Mr. Umali, 31, left Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens yesterday for his arraignment on a charge of second-degree murder, appearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. He was ordered held without bail, on suicide watch.
He was among a group of friends who gathered last Saturday night to celebrate a friend's birthday in the basement of Guernica, a sleek Lower East Side lounge, Chief Brown said.
After one of the friends, Jonathan Chan, 29, lighted a cigarette and passed it to a friend, whom the police identified as Meynard Leonardo, a fight ensued. Investigators have said that when Mr. Blake, 31, asked that the cigarette be put out, a rude response prompted him to eject Mr. Chan from the club.
Mr. Chan's lawyer has said that his client was polite but that the bouncer grabbed him around the neck anyway.
Either way, a struggle that involved Mr. Chan; his brother Ching; his sister, Alice; and other people left Mr. Blake on the floor, bleeding to death.
The police arrested the Chan siblings, but released them early Tuesday after the Manhattan district attorney declined to press charges. The police said the investigation was continuing and charges might still be brought against the Chans.
The siblings, a stockbroker, a medical student and a bookkeeper, are the children of a former Chinatown gang leader who is serving a murder and racketeering sentence in federal prison.
During the fight, Mr. Umali "came to the assistance of the Chans," Chief Brown said.
He said Mr. Umali left the club immediately after the stabbing and walked downtown to a subway station, discarding the knife as he walked. It has not been recovered.
Mr. Umali traveled to the Upper East Side, to the home of friends who, along with the Chan brothers, an investigator said later, studied kali, also called escrima or arnis, together at a martial arts studio on West 27th Street. At a studio on that street, the Fighthouse, there is a weekly escrima class, but an employee refused to provide the name of the teacher last night.
Kali is a martial art without a mystical side, according to its teachers. It was developed over hundreds of years in the Philippines, where it was sometimes forbidden and had to be practiced in secret, to help the underdog against a more powerful enemy, teachers said.
"It's based on this principle: do unto others before they do unto you," said Frank Ortega, a kali guro, or teacher, in Queens. "It's an aggressive art. You don't learn kali to show off or break watermelons, you learn kali to survive. It is more of a street art."
Mr. Umali spent the remainder of the night with his friends, and on Sunday went home to his house on 171st Street in Jamaica wearing fresh clothes they had provided, Chief Brown said. He lives there with his parents and younger sister, people who know the family said.
On Monday morning, he tried to slash his neck and wrists, the police said. "We believe he was distraught over learning of the death of Mr. Blake," Chief Brown said.
But unlike Mr. Blake's wound, which severed his femoral artery, Mr. Umali's wounds were not fatal. He was carried out of his house to an ambulance with his mother and girlfriend looking on, said a neighbor, Tom Bagasan, 57.
Mr. Umali, a slight man in a light blue T-shirt, appeared in court yesterday with bandages on his neck and wrists. His lawyer, David Krauss, said Mr. Umali had attended a Roman Catholic high school, completed some college and worked as a computer network administrator. "He's never had contact with the criminal justice system before," Mr. Krauss said.
The police said Mr. Umali was currently unemployed. Friends and neighbors described him as a quiet man who liked to play with paintball guns.
His parents, who friends said were both retired accountants, are well known among Filipino-Americans in Queens. Mr. Umali's father, Isaias Umali Jr., is a charter member and past president of Bayanihan, a Filipino community organization.
The senior Mr. Umali and his wife paused on their driveway last night to speak to a reporter.
"I have a great son, he's a great guy," he said. "He's very helpful and respectful to elders. We put the burden of the case in God's hands."
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April 21, 2003, 03:35:02 PM ?
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Say nabbed suspect tried to kill himself
MICHELE McPHEE and BARBARA ROSS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Isaias Umali is under arrest for the murder of New York bouncer Dana Blake.
Cops arrested an out-of-work accountant trained in lethal knife-fighting techniques yesterday in the murder of an East Village bouncer who died enforcing the city's smoking ban.
Isais Umali, 31, was taken into custody at Queens' Mary Immaculate Hospital - where he was recovering from self-inflicted slashing wounds to his throat and wrists.
Police sources said Umali attempted suicide Monday - a day after he allegedly delivered a fatal stab wound to Dana Blake's groin as the hulking bouncer tossed the suspect's friends from a birthday party for smoking.
In the chaos after the stabbing, Umali fled from the Avenue B lounge Guernica, ditched the murder weapon and went to his fianc?e's apartment on the upper East Side to get rid of his bloody clothes, said NYPD Chief of Detectives George Brown.
"During the fight, Umali pulled out a knife and stabbed Blake," Brown said. "When Blake fell to the floor, Umali ran from the club, walked south and entered the subway station, discarding the knife along the way."
Umali's friends - Jonathan Chan, 29, and Ching Chan, 31, children of the leader of Chinatown's organized crime's Ghost Shadows - were arrested by patrol cops after Blake collapsed. They were splattered with the victim's blood. Their sister, Alice Chan, 33, was arrested the following morning, and her blood-soaked clothes were seized by cops.
But all three were freed Monday night after prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office said they did not have evidence linking them to the fatal stabbing. That sparked outrage from cops and friends and family of the victim - until yesterday's arrest of a new suspect.
Trained in martial arts
Many of the party attendees - including the Chan brothers and Umali - are trained in the Filipino martial art of Eskrima, which uses precision knife blows and deadly weapons to fight enemies.
Detectives plan to interview a Manhattan martial arts expert who trained Umali how to kill with a single knife wound, sources said.
"Someone trained this guy [Umali] to hit someone in a fatal spot to kill them, and it worked. We want to find him," one police source said.
Umali's involvement in the bloody slaying became clear late Thursday, when a tipster called the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline to turn him in, according to authorities. Sources said the anonymous caller is believed to be his guilt-stricken fianc?e, who had bought Umali new clothes before he returned to his parents' home.
"I was just trying to help out my friends," Umali wrote in a suicide note found by his parents, who were there when their son began slashing himself inside his Hillside, Queens, bedroom, according to one law enforcement source.
Brothers not cleared
Umali's arrest does not completely clear the Chans, police told the Daily News.
"The Chans are definitely still under investigation," said one high-ranking police source. "They still have problems."
But the Chan brothers' lawyer, Ivan Fisher, said Umali's arrest "vindicates" his clients.
"I feel that the recent development strongly supports the accuracy of what my clients have been saying happened here from the beginning - that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the wounding of Mr. Blake," Fisher said.
Umali and the Chans were among 19 people at a birthday party in the hip bar Saturday night spilling into Sunday morning.
The skirmish between Blake and the Chan brothers began just after 2 a.m., when revelers at the party for a woman identified as Catherine Leonardo repeatedly lit cigarettes in the bar's downstairs club in violation of the city's new smoking ban.
After a heated argument with members of the party, Blake, 32, grabbed Jonathan Chan and tried to eject him from the bar.
As the 6-foot-5, 320-pound bouncer shoved the Wall Street banker out the door, he was pounced on by Chan's siblings, police said.
Umali then allegedly entered the scrum, stabbing Blake - who died 11 hours later.
Umali was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon and arraigned on two counts of second-degree murder at Manhattan Criminal Court.
He was brought into court wearing a blue hospital shirt and gray khaki pants, bandages swathing his throat and wrists.
Criminal Court Judge Deborah Kaplan ordered Umali held without bail and on suicide watch.
Umali's attorney, David Krauss, said his client is "traumatized" by the slaying. "He's traumatized by the whole thing," Krauss said. "It's sad. Sad all around. For him and his family."
With Greg B. Smith
Originally published on April 19, 2003
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