Six men were arrested in conjunction with the murder of a young Hoboken resident three blocks from the 23rd Street PATH station in Manhattan on May 21.
Daryush Omar, 20, of North Babylon, Long Island, Najib Noor, 19, of Flushing, Queens, and Walliullah Hashimi, 22, of Willets Point, Queens were charged with murder and robbery, said police. Three other men were charged in connection with the suspects.
Thomas Patrick Whitney, Jr, a 24-year-old financial analyst and Hoboken resident, was found unconscious in a pool of blood on Sixth Avenue between 19th and 20th streets at 4 a.m. May 21. He was found about a half-block from the Spy Club, an upscale Chelsea nightclub where he had been drinking with friends earlier that morning.
The suspects in the murder also had been in the club that night.
Around 4 a.m., Whitney was spotted by a passing ambulance. The EMT members originally believed that they were retrieving a drunken club patron, but quickly realized that something was terribly wrong. Whitney had no identification or wallet with him when the ambulance arrived.
He was taken to at Bellevue Hospital and was pronounced dead about 12 hours later. The murder was caused by blunt force trauma from a single blow to the head, police said. Near the body was a metal bar pulled from construction scaffolding, which could have been the weapon.
A promising lead The day after the murder, surveillance photos show three men trying to use Whitney’s credit card in at least five stores. They were seen trying to buy clothing, hats, sneakers, and gas including stops at a Washington Heights gas station and at a convenience store in Corona, Queens.
Police found and questioned the three men they say were caught on the videos. Those men told police that another man who allegedly had had previous altercations with Whitney, gave them the credit cards. They also told police about two other men who they believe were connected to the crime.
Those other men were arrested and charged with the murder.
In addition, the three men in the video were charged with possession of stolen property. They are The Salem Qurbani, 21, of Whitestone, Queens, Abdullah Kahn, 20, of Huntington Station, Long Island, and Jaweed Farhadi, 24, of Bethpage, Long Island.
Those three men also had been in the Spy Club that night.
According to published reports, Whitney worked for Prudential Financial in Newark and grew up in Howell Township, N.J. He also had worked as an accountant for the Asbury Park Press newspaper.
Whitney had just recently moved to an apartment in Hoboken.
A Star Ledger article said that in 2005, Whitney pleaded guilty to harassment and served three days of community service after he was arrested for fighting with a man outside Manhattan bar.
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