The heartbroken family of the man cops say was stabbed to death in Times Square by a deranged teenager inspired by a TikTok trend hopes to carry his ashes across the country — in honor of the wandering lifestyle the free-spirited victim led.
Leonides Baez was slain outside Burger & Lobster restaurant on W. 43rd St. near Seventh Ave. about 11:30 p.m. May 4. A 17-year-old boy who told cops he was following a “mess-with-a-crackhead” TikTok trend woke and harassed the sleeping stranger with his friends, at one point urinating in a cup and throwing it on Baez, prosecutors said.
“My brother was a loving and caring father of two. He was an amazing, charismatic person who lived each day enjoying the sun and appreciating life to the fullest,” Baez’s sister Catalina Baez wrote on a GoFundMe to cover her brother’s funeral expenses.
“Our family is trying to pick up the pieces and understand how this could happen, but we will never be able to fill the hole this has left in our hearts.”
The sister said her 39-year-old brother, who was homeless by choice, loved riding his bike “anywhere he possibly could” and once biked from his home state of Massachusetts all the way to Florida “just so he could put his feet in the ocean.”
The victim’s “ultimate goal” was to bike across the country to California, a state he’d never visited.
His family is trying to raise $12,000 to bring his remains back to Massachusetts where he will be laid to rest next to his mother who passed away several years ago.
“We also hope to carry his ashes across the country to the places he always dreamed of being,” Catalina, 36, said.
Video obtained by police shows the teen suspect drawing a knife from his vest pocket and chasing the victim into a breezeway, where he stabbed him in the chest, court documents say.
Medics rushed Leonides to Bellevue Hospital but he could not be saved.
The victim’s sister said he was “not a crack head” but a “fully functional” person who led an unconventional life.
The teen suspect, who was arrested after jumping a turnstile at a subway station in Coney Island on Thursday, admitted to stabbing Leonides but claimed to reporters it was “self-defense.”
He was charged with murder and ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty at his arraignment.
The victim’s sister, who viewed the surveillance footage obtained by police, said his self-defense claim is a blatant lie.
“This savage attack on someone who would not hurt a fly is completely unjust,” the sibling wrote. “There was no provocation and no reason behind it other than a senseless act of violence.”
Catalina described her brother as “a traveler” who wandered up and down the East Coast, from Florida to Massachusetts, where his teenage son and daughter live with their mother.
“He just wanted to travel the world and experience life,” the sister previously told the News in an exclusive interview. “He walked, hiked, took trains. That’s the type of life that he had his mind set on.”
Leonides was heading south after visiting his family in Massachusetts when he decided to stop in Manhattan, his sister said.
“He was mostly attracted [to New York City] because there’s just always something to do,” Catalina told The News last week. “There’s always sightseeing. He was attracted to the ongoing things out there.”
Julian Roberts-Grmela / New York Daily News
Leonides Baez was fatally stabbed outside the Burger & Lobster restaurant on W. 43rd St. near Seventh Ave. in Manhattan on May 4. (Julian Roberts-Grmela / New York Daily News)
She described Leonides as a “great dad” who worked odd jobs to fund his lifestyle, including driving for Uber and DoorDash and helping an elderly community with landscaping work in Florida.
“He always had work,” his sister said. “He always had money in his pocket.”
He enjoyed not having a permanent home.
“That’s the lifestyle he chose to live. He loved his life,” Catalina said. “He was always schooling you on something. Survival skills are at a thousand — so if the apocalypse happened, that’s who I’m following.”
“He was smart,” she added. “He loved to draw, study history. He loved to read. Politics, things that are going on in other countries, pretty much just freaking everything.”
Catalina last spoke to her brother over Facebook Messenger in early April.
“He was perfectly fine,” she said of the conversation. “He was always happy. He didn’t let life get to him.”