An argument
sparked a deadly stabbing at a sprawling downtown Manhattan
nightclub early Saturday, police said.
The victim, a
25-year-old man, was wounded in the torso shortly before 3 a.m.
at Strata, a multilevel dance club and restaurant in the
Flatiron district. Police said the stabbing followed a dispute,
but other details weren't known.
Police had taken
one person in for questioning early Saturday, but it wasn't
clear whether the person was a witness or a suspect.
The victim died
shortly after being taken to St. Vincent's Hospital. His name
wasn't released because police hadn't contacted his family.
A woman who
answered the phone at Strata said she knew nothing about the
stabbing. A telephone message left for club managers early
Saturday wasn't immediately returned.
The deadly
stabbing came amid heightened attention to nightclub safety in
New York, and less than six months after the City Council passed
a measure requiring security cameras at nightclub doors.
The city trained
a spotlight on club security after a woman was abducted, raped
and killed in February 2006 after a night out at a SoHo bar. An
unlicensed bouncer at the bar was charged in her death.
Also last year, a
New Jersey teenager wandered away from a friend after leaving a
club in the Chelsea neighborhood, and was later found beaten and
strangled. Separately, a bouncer was accused of killing one man
and wounding three others in a shooting spree outside a lounge
in the same area.
This February, a
shoving match at another Chelsea club sent one patron tumbling
down an elevator shaft to his death. Another clubgoer was
initially charged with criminally negligent homicide, but the
charges were dropped.
