‘I Know the Struggle’: Why a Pizza Mogul Left Pies at Memorials to 4 Homeless Men

Hakki Akdeniz, the owner of seven pizza shops, has never forgotten the time when he was homeless and living at New York’s Bowery Mission.Credit...

Candles, flowers and handwritten tributes flow onto the sidewalk like surf filling a void in the sand, replacing the body just taken away. Memorials in Chinatown this week marked the spots where four homeless men were killed on Saturday, their heads smashed while they slept by an attacker wielding a metal bar.

But something else was left at the sites. Fresh boxes of hot pizza were stacked at each memorial. And with them, a note. “I wish with all my heart,” it read, “that I could have been there at that very moment to protect all of you guys.”