A New York parolee who fatally stabbed a Columbia University doctoral student during a 2021 park rampage drew 25 years to life Friday as the victim’s family mourned a stolen future.
Vincent Pinkney, 30, was sentenced in Manhattan Supreme Court after pleading guilty to murder and attempted murder charges tied to the December 2021 attacks that killed Davide Giri and wounded others.
Giri, a 30-year-old Italian computer science Ph.D. student and teaching assistant at Columbia, was walking home from soccer practice in Morningside Park just before 11 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2021, when Pinkney came up from behind and stabbed him in the stomach. The attack was captured on video. Giri died from his wounds.
Prosecutors said Giri was one of three people Pinkney attacked in roughly 15 minutes. A then-27-year-old Italian tourist was found with stab wounds to the torso. In Central Park, Pinkney tried to stab a man who was with his girlfriend; that man stopped the attack and flagged down police, ending the spree.
Pinkney had been on parole for a Queens gang assault conviction when the stabbings occurred. On July 10 he pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the second degree and two counts of attempted murder in the second degree in exchange for a promised sentence of 25 years to life. A Manhattan court imposed that term Friday.
Giri’s relatives traveled from Italy for the sentencing. His father, Renato Giri, spoke through an interpreter and focused on memory rather than rage.
"All that remains for us are the memories of the beauty of his life and the hope that the love he gave will not be lost,"
Giri’s sister, Caterina Giri, had an emotional statement read in court that centered on the life her brother would never finish.
"Davide lost the entire future he was building with dedication, passion and sacrifice,"
"His life plans, the family he longed for, and the scientific research he would have given to the world."
Those words landed in a courtroom years after a young researcher left Italy in 2016 to study at an Ivy League school and never came home.
Columbia University later granted Giri a posthumous degree and created the Davide Giri Memorial Prize. Professor Luca Carolini described the student colleagues lost.
"(He) was an exceptional researcher, a leader in mentoring younger students, and in fostering collaborations with other research groups, both at universities and in industry,"
The New York Post reported the family’s courtroom statements alongside the university’s tributes and the terms of Pinkney’s plea.
Giri was not a tourist passing through. He was a teaching assistant and doctoral candidate building a research career when a parolee ended that work with a knife in a city park.
Pinkney apologized in a short speech and claimed the attack was due in part to schizophrenia. His Legal Aid Society attorney, Michelle Benoit, said he was “suffering from a psychotic episode” during the attacks.
The court record described in the coverage does not show a separate trial finding that erased the charges. Pinkney still pleaded to murder and two attempted murders. He still took the 25-years-to-life bargain. Mental-health claims arrived after three people had already been attacked and one was dead.
That sequence matters. A man on parole for gang assault walked free long enough to launch a multi-victim stabbing run across Manhattan parks. A bystander, not a patrol plan, stopped the third strike by waving down officers. Cases like this feed long-running concern about NYC emergency response and street safety when violent offenders remain unsupervised.
Pinkney’s prior Queens gang assault conviction and parole status were part of the same public record that produced Friday’s sentence. The attacks were not a sudden first brush with serious violence. They came after the system had already labeled him a risk and still released him under supervision.
Giri left Italy for Columbia with plans for science, family, and mentoring younger students. Pinkney left a parole file and returned with a knife. One man built a research life. The other cut it short in under a quarter of an hour.
Manhattan prosecutors framed the night as a three-victim sequence. Video caught the fatal blow to Giri. The surviving tourist’s torso wounds and the Central Park attempt filled out the same short window. The third target’s decision to stop the attack and call police closed it.
Friday’s sentence locked in the deal struck July 10. Twenty-five years to life will not restore the degree Giri earned the hard way, the collaborations Carolini described, or the family Caterina said her brother wanted. It does remove Pinkney from the street for a long stretch after a parolee’s knife work killed a scholar walking home from soccer.
When a supervised offender can still mount a park stabbing spree, families and taxpayers are left holding the bill for decisions made long before the courtroom speeches begin.
