Samyia Spain: New York Woman Killed After Refusing Stranger’s Advance in New York Bodega
Samyia Spain, 19, was stabbed to death in the early hours of Sunday, March 17, 2024, after refusing the advance of a stranger outside a bodega in Brooklyn.
Nineteen-year-old Samyia Spain and her twin sister, Sanyia, were born and raised in New York City, but the girls spent some time in the South: North Carolina, before moving back.
“They wanted to come back to the city because this is what they know,” the girls’ grandfather, Alphonso Goodson, told the New York Daily News. “It was too quiet down there.”
When they came back, Samyia found work at a local Walgreens pharmacy after graduating high school. Unfortunately, the girls, minding their business, also found trouble.
On Sunday night in Brooklyn, the girls and their cousin went out to grab a late-night bite at a local bodega in the Park Slope neighborhood of New York City.
Sometime after 2 a.m. an unknown man made advances toward Sanyia, asking for her phone number.
“She says, ‘I don’t want to be bothered with you,'” Goodson told the Daily News. “Leave me alone.”
The surviving twin, Sanyia, told the New York Daily News that Samyia didn’t want to give out her phone number.
“I grabbed her phone and I was like, ‘Come with me, come with me,’” Sanyia told The Dailly News. “I was like, ‘Why are you talking to that boy?’ She said, ‘I don’t want to talk to that boy.’”
Samyia then relented, and gave the man her Instagram instead. When he gave her his Instagram account, that’s when things turned.
“She said she wasn’t going to follow him back,” Sanyia recalled. “That’s it. She said no.”
According to eyewitness accounts, the man seemed to be drunk and began to get angry at Samyia, putting his hands on her.
“He pushed little Samyia, and then I pushed him,” Sanyia told the Daily News.
Because he kept making trouble, the store owner kicked the man out of the deli, but he had flown into a rage by then.
“He started kicking on the door, banging on the door,” Goodson was quoted as saying. “So I don’t know if they called the police.”
"So he called them names," one witness told TV station ABC7. "They called him names back. He walked out. He walked down the block angry. And then a couple of like, two, three minutes later, he comes up and stays banging and kicking on the glass door, trying to get in."
“When we were done waiting for our food, he let us out of the store,” the twin sister recalled, referring to the deil owner. “After he let us out the store, he had locked the door behind us.”
Once the girls were outside, where their brother was, they spotted the man with two of his friends.
“He had a knife in his hand and was saying, ‘I’m gonna stab y’all in the face,’” Sanyia told the newspaper. “I’m telling everyone to back up. And he pushed little Samyia to the ground.”
When the man looked like he was going to charge toward Samyia, the twins’ older brought jumped on him, punching him to the ground. A brawl broke out.
“As I was going to grab [Samyia’s phone], he stabbed me in my arm,” Sanyia was quoted as saying. “Samyia then asked him to give her the phone back, and he stabbed her in the neck.”
“She said, ‘I’m about to faint,’” Sanyia recalled. “As soon as she said I’m about to faint, I called 911.”
According to law enforcement, Samyia suffered stab wounds to both her neck and chest. Both of the girls were rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Brooklyn Methodist, where Samyia died. Sanyia was treated and released.
Police are asking for the public’s help in finding the two men they believe to be responsible.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). You can also submit a tip via their website or via DM on Twitter, @NYPDTips. All calls are kept confidential.