Four days after a 19-year-old woman was fatally stabbed in front of her twin sister outside a Brooklyn deli, law enforcement officials are still searching for the man accused of killing her when she rejected his advances.

Police identified the man as Veo Kelly, 20, of Brooklyn, Joseph Kenny, the chief of police, told reporters Thursday. He said U.S. marshals are looking for Mr. Kelly, whose criminal history includes an arrest on theft charges.

Early Sunday morning, the woman, Samyia Spain, and her twin brother Sanyia had been up for hours playing games at their father’s apartment with friends. Then the sisters and the rest of the group went to the Natural Plus deli on the corner of Fourth Avenue and St. Marks Place in Park Slope, a favorite spot for the twins where the owners knew them by name.

The friends arrived around 2 a.m., police said. As they waited for food, a group of young, intoxicated men, including Mr. Kelly, approached them, Chef Kenny said. Mr. Kelly began flirting with the twins and insisted on their contact information, police said.

Mr. Kelly had never met the twins and was in Park Slope for a party in a building next to the deli, Chef Kenny said.

When the women sent him away, he became more aggressive. Moments later, the twins’ friends and deli workers pushed him and his companions out of the store and locked the door, a deli employee said. The women and their friends stayed inside to finish their meal.

When they stepped outside, Mr. Kelly was waiting with a knife and attacked the twins, slashing Sanyia in the arm and fatally stabbing Samyia in the chest, police said. Sanyia was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn, where her sister was pronounced dead.

Investigators searched Mr. Kelly’s apartment on Hancock Street in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood this week, police said. They found the clothes he was wearing the night Samyia was murdered.

In Park Slope, friends and neighbors were stunned that the twins were attacked, apparently because they refused to give anyone a phone number. Many expressed anger at the owners of the building next to the deli, blaming them for allowing parties where, neighbors said, underage people lined up to drink inside on weekends.

At a vigil on Wednesday evening, more than 100 people gathered outside the deli, many surrounding themselves with the twins’ father, Steven Spain, who cried as he struggled to talk about Samyia.

“How could you take her?” he exclaimed. “I do not understand.”

His friends took turns talking into a megaphone, many of them warning young men nearby that women have the right to stay out late without worrying about being attacked.

Darryl Hobson, pastor and vice president of the 79th Precinct Clergy Council, said he was struck by a young woman who described the pressure she felt to give a man her phone number just so he would leave her alone .

“It just gave me a different perspective on what women in the world are dealing with,” Pastor Hobson, 65, said in an interview Thursday.

The location of Samyia’s death, near the popular deli, was also disturbing, said their neighbor, Najee Wright, 23. It is a popular gathering place for those who live in Wyckoff Gardens, the New York City Housing Authority neighborhood where the twins grew up. , and it’s also close to where their father lives. The deli employees knew their usual orders: Samyia preferred the honey-glazed turkey sandwich, said Mohammed Albaher, a cashier at the store who had known the sisters since they were little girls.

Octavia Bell, the mother of an 18-year-old man who was with the twins that night, said her son is distraught, unable to cry or even talk about what happened.

“I’m really, really scared for him because pain shows up in so many ways,” she said. “I don’t want it to be harmful to him.”

Samyia and Sanyia “practically lived at my house,” Ms. Bell said. Samyia was part of a close group of friends and was part of a cooking club with Mrs. Bell.

Samyia “was my favorite of the group,” Ms. Bell said. “The one with her head on her shoulders, that makes sense to these children.”

In the hours after Samyia was killed, Yvette Ramos, who grew up with the twins’ mother, watched Sanyia cope with her sister’s death. At first, she suppressed her pain to comfort her mother, Lashawn Goodson, whose grief is all-consuming, Ms. Ramos said.

Sanyia was too furious to talk to the police, Ms. Ramos said, and had to be convinced. “I told her, come on, put on your sneakers, we’re going to the police station,” Ms. Ramos said.

Sanyia finally broke down about 24 hours after her sister’s death, Ms. Ramos said.

“She said, ‘Auntie, my sister isn’t here.’ And all I can do is hold her and tell her it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to scream,” Ms. Ramos said.

Rusted and stripped of their right seats, the cars parked in rows on street corners serve as the unofficial taxi in the hillside neighborhoods of Cuautepec in Mexico’s capital. The round symbol of the 1960s hippie era is admired — even decorated and named — by residents who say the car represents their resilience and work ethic.

They can be seen everywhere in Mexico City, but they swarm the lively streets of Cuautepec, where you can hear Beetles climbing steep hills, passing residents relaxing on their roofs and dogs keeping watch on balconies.

One of Cuautepec’s many mechanics is usually just a few blocks away. The smell of car exhaust fills the streets as yellow, green, red and purple beetles buzz past each other at intersections.

“It’s not a standard car like all the others,” said Yolanda Ocampo, 45, as she admired her graying 1982 Beetle parked outside the pharmacy where she works. The brake pedal may be stiff, but owning the Beetle means ‘your car is tough’.

“We love the Vochos so much,” she added.

There are competing theories about the car’s beloved nickname, ‘Vocho’. Some say it is derived from the Spanish word for bug, ‘bicho’, and is a combination of the first two letters of Volkswagen. Others say it’s just a shortened hose version of Volkswagen.

Although the German Classic Beetle was officially discontinued in 2003, the classic Beetle has long been a source of pride for Mexico, and Cuautepec in particular. Originally designed for Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, Volkswagen sold hundreds of thousands of Beetles in the 1960s as the car became an emblem of the anti-establishment counterculture.

Ultimately, Volkswagen stopped importing to the United States when it could not keep up with crash tests and emissions standards. The company began to outsource production to other countries. In 1964, it opened a factory in Puebla, Mexico, where it produced Beetles until 2003, and continued to build the sleeker New Beetles until 2019, when Volkswagen completely ended the bug’s reign.

In Cuautepec, most of the cars on the road are still classic models.

“The good ones are the old ones,” says Eduardo Jiménez León, whose son gifted him a Beetle previously used as a taxi.

For residents like Mr. Jiménez León, 73, the Vocho’s popularity is a matter of practicality. The Beetle’s engine is located in the rear instead of the front, making it easier to climb the steep hills of Cuautepec. The cars marked with green and white paint are still used as unofficial taxis in the area. Many visitors who choose to take a gondola lift to the top of the city’s northern hills opt to ride back down in a Vocho for a more retro transportation.

“They say it even runs on the pure smell of gasoline,” said Uriel Mondragón, a local mechanic who said 40 percent of his customers own a Beetle. “It’s not like a new car. This car won’t run out of gas.”

For others, owning a Beetle is more about what the car represents.

In Cuautpec, the car has connected generations of families, often passed down from parent to child.

“Our beloved Vocho has become part of Mexican folklore thanks to its unique personality, quality and reliability,” Álea M. Lozada, Volkswagen spokeswoman in Mexico, said in a statement. “It is an honor to be the last factory where this iconic model was assembled.”

Every Beetle in the neighborhood has its own personality and name; owners place their car’s name at the top of the windshield or on the side. On a recent trip to Cuautepec, a beetle named Ashley. Miranda chugged along a few blocks away. Another had “New York” spray-painted on the side.

Custom designs and decorations are also coveted in the Vocho community.

A taxi driver drove a Vocho with counterfeit $100,000 bills taped to one side. Another had a Scooby-Doo doll installed on his trunk. Stars adorned the windshield of another Beetle.

Ms Ocampo said she would rather drive her Beetle than her brand new SEAT Ibiza car, a supermini. For her, owning a Vocho is a way to push back on the gender stereotypes that existed in her home growing up. She often heard men in Cuautepec wonder whether women could handle the Beetle.

“How is it possible for a woman to drive a Volkswagen because of the heavy steering wheel?” Ms. Ocampo recalled people asking for it. But now: “If there is a Volkswagen, they aren’t surprised, are they? So the truth is that I am proud to drive a Volkswagen.”

But since the Beetle is no longer in production, it can be difficult to find the right parts when repairs are needed.

As a result, the cars are often made up of mismatched colored parts. One Beetle might have a green hood, a blue passenger door and a yellow trunk: signs of past repair work and an attempt to blend in with the lively houses in the neighborhood.

Beetlemania is not limited to the Vocholandia district.

Berenzain Amaya, a tattoo artist at Octattoo Studio in another part of Mexico City, says he has inked the car on at least 10 die-hard Vocho fans.

“It’s hard to explain because when you come from another country and see this German car, it’s a bit weird, but I think Mexico is a weird place,” Mr. Amaya said. “There are many things that are not so common in other countries. This is part of the culture.”

The cars have been part of Mario Gamboa’s family for decades. With his brother Alejandro, Mr. Gamboa, 45, runs a repair shop in Mexico City, Grillos Racing, which primarily serves Beetle owners. But Mr. Gamboa and his brother also outfit the cars with more powerful engines and shiny new exteriors for city drag racing events.

It was a family tradition started by their parents, who were still racing Beetles in their mid-60s.

The family owns a total of 15 beetles. Mr Gamboa himself owns seven. On a recent afternoon, the brothers said they were getting ready to show off the best of the best Beetles at a car show.

He has been attached to the Beetle since he was a child.

“All the people in Mexico learn to drive in a Volkswagen,” Mr. Gamboa said. “All families have a Volkswagen. If you don’t have a Volkswagen, then maybe your uncle or your cousin or your grandmother does.”

For all the talk about converting New York City’s languishing office buildings housing, only one neighborhood has done this on a large scale: the Financial District.

In recent years, luxury apartments have been carved out of a 1907 office tower at 84 William Street and an Art Deco skyscraper at 1 Wall Street, once the headquarters of the Bank of New York. Five other office buildings are being gutted and converted into housing, including a project that is the largest such conversion in the United States.

But the high-rise renovations are just part of a wave of redevelopment in the area that began decades ago with the transformation of low-rise buildings and continues today with massive glass and steel towers.

The financial district’s name has become a misnomer as the neighborhood, once derided as a desert after the bankers went home, becomes a vibrant residential enclave at the southern tip of Manhattan.

There are now 66,000 residents, up from 13,700 in 1990, in the area roughly bounded by Chambers Street and the Brooklyn Bridge to the north and the West Side Highway to the west. There’s even a new Whole Foods.

The financial district’s shift offers a road map and a glimmer of hope for what could happen in neighborhoods from Lower Manhattan to Midtown Manhattan, which have been saddled with a glut of empty offices as companies continue to cut back on space in the wake of the pandemic. Real estate analysts predict that a large proportion of buildings – especially decades-old offices with outdated layouts – will remain unattractive to most companies and will have to find other uses.

Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have spoken out in favor of residential renovations as a solution to both the office surplus and another major problem: the city’s housing shortage. But few buildings make the change. Such modifications can be expensive and impractical, given the difficulty of creating light-filled homes from dark, deep interiors.

The financial district’s transformation emerged from two setbacks—the exodus of banks and insurance companies from Lower Manhattan to Midtown, and the September 11 attack—that have resulted in 9-to-5 eligible workers being steadily replaced by parents who pushing strollers. .

The area’s compact lots created a predominance of slender buildings with high ceilings and large windows, making renovations easier.

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 1,500 homes have been added to the area in new buildings and renovations. Thousands more are expected in coming years, including in what is believed to be the nation’s largest conversion: 1,300 apartments in an office tower to be vacated by JPMorgan Chase in early 2021.

Cory Levy, 26, said he has long been fascinated by the charm of the financial district, such as its short streets that hark back to when the Dutch settled the area as New Amsterdam, before Manhattan was laid out on a grid.

Still, friends warned him not to move there.

“They said it was a ghost town,” Mr. Levy said.

He decided to take a look after work and visited a rooftop bar, restaurants and coffee shops.

“It’s not the East Village,” he said, “but it is a residential area, and if you like to go out late at night and do things, there are places to eat and drink.”

He loved the area and in April signed a lease on an apartment with his girlfriend, a one-bedroom apartment in a 57-story former office tower that was converted in 2008.

Mr Levy said the area had major advantages over other neighbourhoods. About half of the city’s subway lines stop nearby, as do several ferries and the PATH train to New Jersey. There are drawbacks, he acknowledged: Sunlight can be hard to find in the narrow hallways.

The financial district’s makeover began in the mid-1990s, when the office market faced similar challenges. As vacancies increased, state lawmakers approved tax breaks for developers who converted languishing office towers into housing. A construction boom followed.

By the time incentives expired in 2006, nearly 13,000 units had been created. This is evident from an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission. Before 1990, the area totaled about 7,400 homes, according to the Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit that manages the local business improvement district.

Office conversions continued even after the stimulus expired, but at a slower pace. Joey Chilelli, managing director at Vanbarton Group, a real estate company, predicted that the latest blow to the office market would most likely lead to more conversions in the financial district, also known as FiDi.

According to the newspaper, the neighborhood has the highest office vacancy rate in Manhattan real estate company Colliers. Nearly 27 percent of office space is for rent, the group says, up from 11 percent before the pandemic.

Vanbarton Group is redeveloping and creating the latest renovation in the area 588 apartments at Waterstraat 160. The company purchased the property in 2014 and planned to keep it as an office until the pandemic hit. Apartment rentals start this winter.

“A lot of buildings down there are ripe for renovation,” Mr. Chilelli said. “There will be a continued march forward as people discover that FiDi is actually a great place to live.”

Over the years, some of the city’s earliest skyscrapers, including 15 Park Row, have become residential properties. But so do many modern office buildings that struggled to retain corporate tenants in the 1980s and 1990s, including 90 William Street, near the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Ruth Cheng was one of the first tenants to move into 90 William Street in 2008, purchasing a condominium with her husband after visiting a sample unit. They raised two children there until they had a third and needed more space.

“We didn’t even look elsewhere,” said Ms. Cheng, 49, adding that her children’s schools were nearby. “We wanted to stay with FiDi.” The family now lives in a new building two blocks away.

During the family’s 15 years in the area, multiple schools opened, as did new restaurants and shops, including at the nearby South Street Seaport. One of the newest stores in the neighborhood is Best Sicily Bottega, an Italian cafe and grocery store on Beaver Street.

The store’s founders, Silvia Lombardo and Nicolas Calia, met via Instagram during the pandemic and discovered that they both lived in the financial district and had grown up ten minutes apart in Sicily. When they met, Ms. Lombardo had an online store that sold Italian products, but she wanted to display them in a physical store, along with food items such as olive oil cakes and meatballs made from her family’s recipes.

With their shared love of Sicily and food, they opened the store across the street from Ms. Lombardo’s apartment in May. They said they had not thought about opening elsewhere and had decided to stay open after hours to serve local residents takeaway food, such as pasta on Fridays.

“We really believe that something is changing here,” Ms. Lombardo said.