New York homeowner who once spoke out against crime arrested for allegedly beating menacing vagrant

A Chinatown landlord who spoke out bitterly against crime after the high-profile murder of one of his tenants brutally beat an apparently homeless man who was holding a makeshift gun Saturday, police sources said.

The owner, Brian Chin, 32, was charged with felony assault for the overnight attack that left the drifter hospitalized with injuries so severe he was unable to tell investigators his own name, sources said Sunday.

A police source said the beaten man was also charged with threatening to make threats for his role in the fight, which began around 10 p.m. near Chrystie and Grand streets in Manhattan.

According to police sources, CCTV footage taken at the scene shows the homeless man breaking a wooden chair and then threateningly brandishing a piece of wood at Chin.

The makeshift club had a nail at the end, a police source said.

In the video, the homeless man then appears to brandish the gun at Chin.

Chin charged the man, knocking him to the ground and punching him in the head several times, while also appearing to kick him.

The vagrant was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he had to be intubated, a police source said.

Other videos from the scene before the chair was destroyed show Chin approaching the man and kicking him as he lay on the ground, a police source said. The homeless man then responded by breaking the chair, the source said.

Chin, who is cooperating with police, told police the homeless man was harassing people before Chin kicked him, the source said.

The source suggested the landlord may be traumatized after one of the tenants in his Chinatown building was fatally stabbed by a random sicko in 2022.

In that murder, Chinatown producer Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was followed home by Assamad Nash, 27, and stabbed 40 times in his own kitchen. Nash pleaded guilty last month to the killing.

Chin spoke to the Post after a memorial for Lee was vandalized shortly after his killing, saying he and the Asian community were “tired of being attacked.”

The owner was released on bail on Sunday on assault charges and is due to appear in court again on October 10.