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The man accused of kicking a 64-year-old to death outside a Brooklyn subway station for no reason last week was participating in a taxpayer-funded art “diversion” program — and painted pictures of cops being murdered, The Post can reveal.
Deranged David Mazariegos — arrested less than 24 hours after Nicola Tanzi was attacked and died of his injuries on Oct. 8th by Jay St-Metrotech station — posted a series of artworks online depicting himself beheading America’s Founding Fathers and NYPD officers as pigs.
Other posts include the American flag burning as a black man stood triumphantly over a beheaded white man and the Burger King logo, with the text changed to “Murder King, you’ll get it our way.”
He also made videos of himself brandishing nunchucks on a subway platform.
Many of the gruesome pictures were posted while Mazariegos, 25, was attending two taxpayer-funded rehabilitation art therapy programs on a daily basis.
Mazariegos was an intern to art director Anthony DeJesus at the Harlem-based Youth Justice Network, where he was commissioned to paint murals. He was also a member of The Animation Project where he became a certified mentor to coach high school students in May.
When Mazariegos was hauled into the dock on July 8 over a separate charge of attacking a man over the age of 60, his lawyer used his association with the art programs in her argument for him to get bail.
Manhattan Judge Robert Rosenthal worried aloud about freeing Mazariegos during that case, saying “the severity of [his crimes] is increasing over time.”
But lawyer Gretchen Reeser of Legal Aid Society said Mazariegos is in a “program full time with Youth Justice Network,” as an intern.
“He goes there Monday through Thursday, each day of the week, and he participates in groups and art classes and things like that,” she said in a court transcript obtained by The Post.
She failed to mention that much of his art was of violent fantasies and killing police officers.
Mazariegos posted $1,000 bond and was released a few days later.
The taxpayer-funded Youth Justice Network is a voluntary program which aims to “break cycles of incarceration,” according to its website.
Its mission statement claims: “We commit to the day that not a single young person will spend another night in jail.”
Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is a proponent of using such programs for criminals as an alternative to jail.
DeJesus once led YJN’s schoolkid-aged participants in watching a film about communist leader Fred Hampton before they went out to paint a mural of him on a Brooklyn street, with slogans “I am the revolution” and “Black Panther Party,” according to BKreader.com
“We were devastated to hear about this tragedy, and we extend our deepest sympathies to [Nicola] Tanzi’s family and all those grieving this incident,” a YJN spokesperson said in a statement to The Post, although incorrectly naming the victim.
The organization would not answer questions about its art program or Mazariegos’ involvement.
YJN’s tony board of directors includes chairman Jamaal Thomas, a program director at Yale University, and faculty from Columbia University and University of Chicago.
Another picture obtained by The Post shows Mazariegos grinning after receiving his certificate saying he had qualified as a mentor at The Animation Project’s Computer Animation Group, which pairs mentors and students, usually high schoolers, Cein Chavez, a former participant, told The Post.
“Since it’s government funded, I feel like they take a lot of people of varying skill levels. They’re not very selective of who they take inside,” Chavez, a 22-year-old artist, said of the mentors.
Pictures posted on Mazariegos “dartist.mazarati” Instagram account show him spray painting an internal wall at the YJN with a colorful mountain range and “Harlem World” in graffiti letters.
However, other artworks on the account are far darker, with recurrent themes of cartoon characters, sex and violence — including many beheadings.
“Never forget how this land was taken for your ancestors through rape murder castration pillaging and slaughter” he wrote on an all-caps Columbus Day 2023 Instagram post, accompanied by a drawing of George Washington and Christopher Columbus massacring Native Americans.
Following his July release on the earlier assault charge, Mazariegos set out on a spree of petty chaos, according to police reports.
Later that month he was arrested for jumping up and down on a woman’s car in the Bronx, shattering the windshield, while screaming, “Come get me! Y’all afraid of the government!” (a line that appears in his artwork); then he received summons for riding between subway cars and was arrested for stealing money out of a bodega tip jar.
In 2019, Mazariegos attempted to burn down a church in the Bronx and was arrested for arson.
On a summer afternoon he lit a T-shirt on fire and stuffed it under a church sign, sending terrified parishioners running outside. With the sign aflame, Mazariegos shouted, “I hate churches, hospitals, police. These systems oppress people,” according to a police report obtained exclusively by The Post.
Although he was living with an aunt over the summer he had more recently been homeless and hustling for cash selling his artworks on the street.
However, Mazariegos still produced promo videos on Instagram and TikTok and had a sleek, professional website.
After his alleged attack on Tanzi, a Brooklyn resident and devout Catholic, Mazariegos coldly told cops he didn’t like the way the victim “looked at him,” or that he had held the emergency door open for him, sources told The Post following the incident.
He had repeatedly pummeled the victim’s face and stomped on his head up to 15 times until he was dead, sources claimed.
Tanzi had previously worked in the World Trade Center where he survived both terrorist attacks there — in 1993 and on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mazariegos took Tanzi’s credit card and used it to buy a 20-inch Katana sword, which he was in possession of when he was arrested.
Prosecutors have said he confessed to beating Tanzi and “taking his spirit,” according to Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Sapna Kishnani.
He is now being held without bail and has not yet entered a plea to the murder charge.
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