Sword-wielding maniac revealed chilling reason for random NYC subway murder: sources

A deranged crook with a mile-long rap sheet allegedly confessed to savagely beating a stranger to death outside a Brooklyn subway station — coldly telling cops he didn’t like the way the victim “looked at him,” sources revealed Wednesday.

David Mazariegos, 25, was charged with murder in the senseless Tuesday afternoon assault near the Jay Street-MetroTech Station, law enforcement sources said.

The creep flashed a sinister, partially toothless grin Wednesday as he was carted out of a Manhattan courthouse, where he was first arraigned on charges from a past case and his dramatic arrest with a samurai sword in Times Square hours after the brutal slaying.

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“Why’d you take my planet?” Mazariegos raved outside the courtroom when asked why he killed the man.

Sources said the sicko allegedly copped to attacking 64-year-old Nicola Tanzi in downtown Brooklyn because the hapless man held a subway gate door open for him — an act of kindness that the hotheaded hoodlum told cops he disliked.

A shockingly brutal attack followed, with the assailant repeatedly pummeling the victim’s face and stomping on his head up to 15 times, sources said.

The assault lasted 10 minutes before the sadistic attacker took Tanzi’s wallet and ID — which delayed his identification by police — and left him battered and unconscious near Lawrence and Willoughby streets, according to sources.

The brutalized man died roughly an hour later in New York-Presbyterian Hospital Brooklyn Methodist.

Tanzi, who had lived in Brooklyn for over 20 years, worked in security and planned to retire next year, his pals the The Post.

“We lost a good friend. He was a really good guy,” said Carmina Racaro, owner of a flower shop near Tanzi’s Bensonhurst apartment. “He would come here for espresso, ask ‘How are you?’ He was happy.”

Racaro said Tanzi originally hailed from Bari, Italy, and was a regular church usher during the Italian-language church services at the Catholic St. Dominic parish. He also belonged to an Italian club in Carroll Gardens, friends stated.

Tanzi’s alleged attacker, of the Bronx, has at least 33 past arrests, including both sealed and unsealed cases, and is listed on the city’s transit recidivist database, sources said.

In between arrests, Mazariegos appears to be a gifted parkour enthusiast and street artist, according to dozens of social media videos alternately showing his brightly colored artworks and him engaging in feats of athleticism, including flipping into a river, twirling nunchucks and hanging off the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables. “IM DA ILLEST GRAPHIC ARTIST,” boasts the “Dartist Mazarati” YouTube page apparently belonging to Mazariegos.

Most of his arrests going back to 2019 involved small-time offenses such as fare evasion, graffiti and petty larceny, according to the sources.

But records also hint that Mazariegos could violently snap, as he allegedly did at a Manhattan security guard in June — an assault that showed eerie similarities to the fatal beating in Brooklyn.

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A month later, Mazariegos allegedly jumped on top of a car in the Bronx, shattering its windshield, while maniacally yelling, “Come get me. Y’all afraid of the government,” court records state.

He was released on his own recognizance in the case, which was his last arrest before the beating death in Brooklyn, records show.

The shocking attack prompted NYPD officials to send a department-wide emergency alert to cops’ phones during the manhunt for the killer that ended up leading to Mazariegos’ arrest, said Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

“Eagle-eyed cops working near Times Square recognized this perp from the photos they had just received and immediately brought this dangerous criminal into custody,” she wrote on X.

Street photographer Christopher Gonzalez, 36, chanced upon the arrest after he got a Citizen app notification that someone was spotted walking into a West 42nd Street store with a sword.

Mazariegos bizarrely was laughing when NYPD cops swarmed him, a stunned Gonzalez recounted.

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“He didn’t have the sword drawn or anything like that, but there was a samurai sword,” Gonzalez said.

“Even when I saw him yesterday, before I knew it was the same person (as the Brooklyn beating), I’m like, ‘This guy’s not right in the head.’”

Sources said Mazariegos told cops he bought the sword on Canal Street. He also carried a set of nunchucks, according to the sources.

The wacko was hauled into Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned on a weapons charge, as well as on an outstanding larceny warrant for allegedly stealing from a deli’s tip jar on September 26.

“It is the people’s understanding that he is going to be immediately arrested by detectives for a homicide,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney James Edwards-Lebair said.

Two NYPD detectives stood behind a handcuffed Mazariegos, who wore what appeared to be a torn white Tyvek suit.

Outside the courtroom, Mazariegos raved about his dead ancestors, blamed Western medicine for his family’s demise and questioned how many bodies were buried under the courthouse.

Additional reporting by Steven Hirsch,  Estrella McDaniel, Tina Moore and Jennifer Bain