A heartbreaking photo has emerged showing the Brooklyn activist who was killed in an unprovoked stabbing this week happily posing with his girlfriend just hours before he died in her arms — as his grieving partner revealed an emotional message she found on his phone.
Ryan Carson, 32, and his girlfriend were seen embracing at a wedding they attended Sunday, dressed in a grey suit and blue dress as they beamed together in the photo posted to X around 7 p.m. that evening.
Hours later, the couple sat together at a bus stop in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 4 a.m. Monday — still clad in their wedding attire — when an irate man walked by them and pushed over a motor scooter just as they began to leave.
Security footage obtained by The Post on Tuesday showed the man turn to the couple and shout “What are you looking at?” before he advanced and began to push Carson and swat at his face.
As Carson told the man to calm down, the attacker began shouting “I’ll kill you!” before drawing a knife and stabbing him multiple times in the chest.
The suspect then appeared to spit in the woman’s face and kicked her boyfriend as he lay bleeding on the ground, before running off.
The victim’s girlfriend called 911. Carson was hospitalized but could not be saved — as a stab wound had pierced his heart, according to cops and law enforcement sources.
His killer remained at large Tuesday.
The next morning, Carson’s girlfriend, Claudia, shared a heart-wrenching note she found written in his phone.
“When you get right down to it, all I want is to love Claudia more than she’s ever been loved, which is frankly all she’s ever deserved,” he wrote, according to a screenshot she posted to X.
“I found this note in Ryan’s phone. He did, he did, he did,” she wrote in the post, which was later made private.
Carson was well known among his friends and community has being a warm-hearted leader, and an impassioned environmental activist.
“He’s really… like the epicenter of an entire community that he created, that he brought together,” his roommate, 31-year-old Tom Krantz told The Post.
“I don’t think anyone is exaggerating when they say he would give the shirt off his back,” Krantz added. “He was the guy that bent over backward time and time again to be there with his friends.”
