Homeless man who followed and killed Asian woman in her apartment ‘mimicked her voice to get rid of police’

The man who followed Christina Yuna Lee home reportedly stabbed her over 40 times and imitated her voice when police began knocking on her apartment door, prosecutors said.

Assamad Nash was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, burglary and sexually motivated burglary on Monday in Lee’s murder.

New details of the horrific slaying were shared Monday during Nash’s arraignment.

The 25-year-old homeless man was caught on security footage following Lee, who was 35, into her apartment building just before 4.30 am Sunday. He followed her up six flights of stairs, remaining one floor below her before rushing up into her apartment behind her.

Neighbors heard Lee screaming for help and called the police, who also heard her cries for help before her voice went quiet. Prosecutor Dafna Yoran said another voice then emerged — and that it was Nash, imitating the voice of a woman and claiming that they did not need the police.

Nash then tried to leave through a fire escape but saw a police officer on the roof and went back inside the victim’s apartment.

Emergency service unit officers broke down the door and entered Lee’s apartment at 5.40am to find her in the bathroom with stab wounds to her torso. She was naked from the waist up, prosecutors said.

Authorities then found Nash hiding underneath the victim’s bed.

He was arrested inside the apartment and taken to Bellevue Hospital to treat cuts and lacerations.

While police are still investigating whether the slaying was a hate crime, attacks against Asian Americans have been on the rise, especially in New York City, where a 40-year-old Asian American woman was shoved to her death while waiting for the subway in Times Square last month.

Lee had lived in New Jersey previously, where she graduated from Rutgers University and worked for Splice, an online platform for digital music.

At the time of Lee’s killing, Nash was out on supervised release on three open cases and also has an extensive record in New Jersey, prosecutors said.

If convicted, he faces a sentence as high as life without parole.

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