Worst Landlord Ever? Bronx Homeowner Stabs, Kills Tenant Over Unpaid Rent, Police Say

A landlord in the Bronx borough of New York City was accused this week of killing his tenant over months of unpaid rent.

Zakir Khan, 44, owed nine months of fees when landlord Taha Mahran, 51, stabbed him repeatedly outside the home at the center of the dispute Wednesday evening, according to police. Khan was pronounced dead after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Still covered in blood, Mahran walked into a local police station while investigators recovered a knife, police sources told the New York Daily News. Mahran has been charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon and is due in court Thursday.

Khan had formerly run a real estate office and was enlisted by Mahran, then a friend, to help rent the home. However, Khan moved him, his wife and three children into the property, the Daily News reported. Neighbors said that Mahran had tried repeatedly to get Khan out and the case even went to court last November.

“He was very, very stressed out about it,” neighbor Leana Llanas told CBS New York. “He didn’t know what else to do. He has to call the cops all the time because wants them out and these people they don’t want to leave.”

The frustration appeared to fatally boil over Wednesday, when a friend of Khan’s family said Mahran ambushed Khan.

"He pulled up in his car and waited. He stabbed him in the chest, again and again,” the anonymous source told the Daily News. “He stabbed him as he came out of the house. This is a country of rules and laws. You respect life. How do you do this?”

Khan’s 12-year-old child witnessed the killing from their home, sources told PIX11.

Khan, who moved to the United States from Bangladesh in 1993, was politically active in the Bangladeshi community, often coming into contact with state Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda, D-Bronx. Sepulveda said that the events of Wednesday were made even more tragic because the dispute was set to soon reach a resolution.

“A warrant of eviction had been secured,” he told the Daily News. “And I think the eviction was probably was probably going to happen within a relatively short period, and that’s what makes this so much more unfortunate.”