Sayed Mohassib is 27 years old. He's charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Katie Suarez, a woman who was jogging along a Brooklyn waterfront path on October 30. According to the New York Post, he told investigators he woke up from a blackout covered in blood and with the murder weapon.

He worked as a paraprofessional at PS 200 in Brooklyn. An elementary school. With children.

The Department of Education allowed Mohassib to return to that school even after the system had every reason to know he was a risk. Not the Bee reported that Mohassib had joined the NYPD in 2022. He lasted six weeks. After the NYPD, he joined the Marines. The Marines discharged him as psychologically unfit. When he tried to get back into the NYPD, they rejected his reinstatement request.

So the police department said no. The Marine Corps said no. And the New York City Department of Education said — come on in, there are kids to supervise.

Mohassib was arrested at the 62nd Precinct stationhouse after the October 30 killing near Gravesend Bay. He told police he ditched the knife in the garbage. Investigators searched a Staten Island landfill and a New Jersey dump looking for the weapon. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital.

The sequence matters. A man applies to be a cop, washes out in a month and a half. Joins the military, gets discharged for psychological reasons. Gets rejected by the same police department a second time. And somewhere in that chain of institutional red flags, the city's public school system looked at his record and saw an elementary school paraprofessional.

This isn't a background-check failure in the sense that somebody missed a form. Every institution that screens for fitness — law enforcement, the military — screened Mohassib out. The Department of Education either didn't check or didn't care. Either answer is a disaster when the employee is working with children.

The system that's supposed to protect kids in a Brooklyn elementary school had less rigorous standards than the one that hands out patrol badges. The NYPD wouldn't give him a gun. The Marines wouldn't keep him in a barracks. PS 200 gave him a classroom.

Katie Suarez was out for a jog on a Brooklyn waterfront path. She didn't come home. Mohassib told police he blacked out and woke up covered in blood.

The Marines flagged him. The NYPD flagged him twice. The Department of Education put him next to other people's children.