Mourning Humble ‘Uncle Kwok,’ 83, Killed in Chinatown Rampage

All were killed by repeated blows to the head, resulting in skull fractures and brain injury, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Monday. A fifth man, David Hernandez, 55, was left in critical condition.

At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Santos was arrested after a police officer spotted him near the intersection of Mulberry and Canal Streets, police said. Fresh blood and hair clung to the metal bar he was carrying, the police said.

On Monday, at the spot where he was killed, someone had placed a photo of Mr. Kwok, looking up as if to answer a question, amid bouquets of flowers. “A polite, humble, gentleman,” it read, under his name, which is sometimes spelled Kok, and the years of his birth and death, 1935 to 2019.

“Our Friend and Brother,” read another note, along with a translation in Chinese.

As people paid their respects on Monday morning, or gathered for a nearby vigil led by local elected officials, no family members of Mr. Kwok appeared. But Ms. Mui, her hair askew and in dark sunglasses, spoke lovingly of him to anyone who asked, taking on the role of surrogate daughter.

In an interview, she recounted that she had met Mr. Kwok two decades ago and had visited his apartment, when he still had a home. He had been an old friend of her mother’s family, known to her as Uncle Kwok, and he had lived in an old tenement building on East Houston Street with a bathtub in the living room.

“I remember him standing in the living room,” she said. “He was wearing a tank top and he was smiling.”