Four Arrested In Subway Slashing Spree That Wounded Five Riders on #4 Train in AM

 

BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ

GOTHAMIST

OSUGI / SHUTTERSTOCK

Police have arrested four people in connection with a slashing and robbery spree that left five people injured — including a man who was stabbed in the eye — aboard Manhattan subways early Friday morning.

The suspects — who ranged in age from 17 to 19-years-old — were taken into custody at the West 79th Street subway station just before noon, roughly five hours following the attacks. Transit officers recognized the group from security footage that captured some of the incident, police said.

Over the span of just 30 minutes on Friday morning, the knife-wielding crew allegedly slashed four riders in the face, and punched a fifth person.

"They were pairing off as the train was moving," NYPD Assistant Chief Jason Wilcox said at a press conference announcing the arrests.

In the first incident aboard the southbound 4 train, the group approached a 44-year-old man and slashed him in the face, police said. The victim exited at Union Square, as the group continued riding.

Before the train had gotten to its next stop at Astor Place, the suspects had allegedly slashed another victim in the nose and punched a third man in the face. Five minutes after that, as the train neared the Brooklyn Bridge stop, a member of the group allegedly slashed another rider in the cheek, taking his cell phone and wallet.

At around 5 a.m., police said, a fifth person told police that he had been approached by a group and stabbed in the right eye near the 59th Street-Columbus Circle station.

The crime spree quickly drew calls from MTA and union officials to add more police to the subways, a common refrain pushed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, as more New Yorkers return to the system.

While overall transit crime is down by nearly half since last year, felony assaults have increased by 25% in the subway system.

In response to a series of stabbings earlier this year, the city surged 500 more NYPD officers into the system, and more recently agreed to add auxiliary cops to the system's busiest stations.

Times Square Shooting Rattles City As De Blasio Promises More Cops

 

GOTHAMIST

BY JEN CHUNG

Times Square, May 8, 2021 JEN CHUNG / GOTHAMIST

Police are continuing to search for those involved in the Times Square shooting that left three bystanders wounded on Saturday. Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced that "additional NYPD resources" will be deployed to the area "to add an extra measure of protection."

According to multiple reports, police sources suggest that the person of interest was aiming for his brother, apparently after they had gotten into an argument.

The shooting took place just before 5 p.m., at the corner of 44th Street and 7th Avenue, right by the ViacomCBS building at 1515 Broadway. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said that officers in the area responded to the incident and found three people—a 43-year-old woman from New Jersey, a 23-year-old woman from Rhode Island, and a four-year-old girl from Brooklyn—with gunshot wounds.

One of the victims, Wendy Magrinat, 23, had been waiting with her family, including her husband and toddler, outside the Line Friends store at the corner of 45th Street and 7th Avenue. One of the bullets fired hit her in the leg. "I was literally screaming on the floor, ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I have a 2-year-old,'" Magrinat told the Daily News. "When I got shot I told my husband to run because he had my baby girl."

She told the NY Post that doctors decided against removing the bullet from her thigh—"So I live with a bullet in my leg." They reported that the dispute arose from street vendors selling CDs.

An evidence marker on the northwest corner of 44th Street and 7th Avenue, May 8, 2021 JEN CHUNG / GOTHAMIST

The little girl hit by a bullet, identified as Skye Martinez, didn't seem to realize what happened. Her aunt, Danae Romero, said in an interview with the Post, “She didn’t feel anything. Even when we noticed when we were at the corner, she wasn’t crying." Later, they realized she was bleeding.

Skye and her family had also been waiting outside the Line Friends store, and the bullet apparently "just entered and then exited" her left leg. Officer Alyssa Vogel put a tourniquet on her before carrying her and running to an ambulance. Calling Skye "the strongest person I have ever seen," Vogel explained the urgency of the situation to Good Morning America: "When there is a gunshot wound up on your thigh, there are arteries, and you didn't know if an artery was hit or not. So I was just wanting to make sure she got to the hospital as soon as possible."

The third victim, Marcela Aldana, reportedly had surgery to remove a bullet that struck her in the left foot.

Vijay Dandapani, head of the Hotel Association of New York City, told Gothamist/WNYC that city officials need to confront the incident as they also promote the reopening of activities. "Every tourist, before they set out, looks to see, 'Is it a safe place? Will I get robbed? Will I get mugged? Will I get shot and killed?'" Dandapani said. "These are factors that need to be addressed head on."

"What happened was unacceptable," de Blasio said of the shooting during his Monday press conference. "This individual is going to be found and found soon and he will pay the consequences."

However, he stressed that the city has been addressing gun violence in the communities and that the bigger task was to "bring back the city" and jobs and activities, which he said would reduce crime and violence. "People want to come to the city. it is an overwhelmingly safe city when you compare it to cities around the world," de Blasio said. Tourism is already coming back... In the end, our job is to keep bringing back this city."

According to the NYPD, there have been 448 shooting incidents in the city through Saturday, which is up sharply from 241 incidents by this point, a year ago.

 

4-year-old girl, two women shot in Times Square

Michelle Acevedo and Dennis Romero

YAHOO / NBC NEWS

A 4-year-old girl shopping for toys and two women bystanders were shot and injured Saturday in Times Square, the New York Police Department said.

The afternoon shooting occurred at West 45th Street and 7th Avenue in the city's tourism zone. No suspects were in custody but a person of interest was being sought for questioning, police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a news conference.

"The perpetrators of this senseless violence are being tracked down and the NYPD will bring them to justice," Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted.

Police described the three as unintended targets struck when a dispute between four men nearby erupted in gunfire. An officer who was nearby heard four to five shots, the commissioner said.

Police indicated they believe only one person opened fire.

Shea described the 4-year-old as a "very brave girl that is buying toys when she is shot." She was with her family at the time, he said, and the victims did not know each other.

The girl, identified as Skye Martinez, was struck in a leg, police said. Wendy Magrinat, 23, was struck in a thigh, and Mạrcela Aldana, 43, was hit in a foot, they said.

Magrinat is a tourist from Rhode Island who went to Times Square after discovering the Statue of Liberty was closed, Shea said.

The injuries were not life-threatening, but Skye had to undergo surgery, authorities said.

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson tweeted that the victims were in stable condition.

Times Square is known for its annual New Year's celebration, the Broadway strip of theaters and tourist-friendly concessions shops.

 

In defense of prosecutions: Few candidates in the race for Manhattan DA seem to want to use the justice system to convict criminals

By ERROL LOUIS  DAILY NEWS

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |

Top (L-R) Manhattan DA Cy Vance, Alvin Bragg, Dan Quart, Lucy Lang, Eliza Orlins. Bottom (L-R) Diana Florence, Tahanie Aboushi, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, Janos Marton and Liz Crotty.

Public safety is very much on the ballot in the battle for the Democratic nomination for Manhattan district attorney on June 22. The contest is a chance for New Yorkers to answer some basic questions about what we believe about human nature, crime, fairness, justice and what constitutes a safe city.

Most of the eight candidates are running on a promise to have Manhattan join jurisdictions around the country — including Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco and Boston — that have elected so-called progressive prosecutors in recent years. These candidates want to shift the resources and philosophy of the office away from investigation, indictment, prosecution and incarceration, and in the direction of addiction treatment, mental health treatment, second-chance programs and other interventions that don’t involve punishment and prison cells.

A great deal of reform has already taken place under departing DA Cy Vance. In 2013, according to the office’s data dashboard, more than 98,000 cases were disposed of by the office, a number that fell by more than 60% to the 44,000-plus cases in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

Most of these cases were for drugs, petty larceny, vehicle violations or disorderly conduct, offenses that many of the current candidates for office say should not be prosecuted at all.

There’s a longstanding national debate over the purpose and value of arresting and prosecuting people for nuisance crimes like public drunkenness, prostitution, shoplifting, fare-beating, loitering and possessing small amounts of illegal drugs. The common-sense consensus is that hassling people for such minor offenses is a waste of time and money that doesn’t add much to public safety.

Or does it?

A few of the candidates — notably, attorney Liz Crotty — used this week’s 90-minute televised debate (available online at NY1.com) to argue that it’s dangerous to abandon traditional law-and-order methods too quickly.

“Don’t let my opponents fool you. This election, and the job of district attorney, is about public safety,” said Crotty. “Victims’ voices have been muted by calls for reform.”

It’s jarring to hear candidates like Tahanie Aboushi promise to stop prosecuting all misdemeanors, which would include burglary, trespassing and incidents like the recent vandalism of synagogues and some of the shoving and harassment of Asian New Yorkers.

“If prosecution and incarceration did anything for hate crimes, we wouldn’t be still experiencing it,” Aboushi said at the debate, reflecting a deeply skeptical view of the value of prosecuting low-level crimes shared by Eliza Orlins and Assemblyman Dan Quart.

But it’s much too easy to simply dismiss the value of holding people accountable for nuisance behavior. In the case of shoplifting, for instance, any one shoplifter who steals a handful of goods probably shouldn’t be jailed and put through the system — but if word spreads that shoplifting carries no serious penalty, some stores will be looted to the bare walls in no time.

Common sense dictates that certain kinds of seemingly minor disorder can spiral out of control.

“It is not okay to walk into somebody’s store and take what you want and walk out,” Tali Farhadian Weinstein said in answer to a hypothetical scenario.

But that was the exception to the rule. When it comes to sex work, petty theft and other minor crimes, most candidates want to divert defendants away from jail and into treatment programs or counseling.

“Get the folks the services they need so they’re not churning in and out of Rikers year after year,” candidate Alvin Bragg said. “We’ve lived this since I was 12 years old in Harlem.”

The truth, however, is that the services may not be available in the quality and quantity needed to begin sending thousands of cases to nonprofit organizations. And there’s an open question about what happens if a defendant simply refuses to go to rehab or counseling; are we sending them for medical treatment on pain of imprisonment for declining to go?

The biggest question hanging over the reform movement is whether swapping cops and courts for counseling and community solutions is contributing to the current spike in shootings and violent crime in New York and elsewhere.

Nationwide, the record is mixed. In San Francisco, which elected progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin, violent crimes decreased last year — but burglaries went up 42% and car thefts increased by 34%.

In Philadelphia, where progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner is often held up as a model, 499 people were murdered last year — one shy of the largest annual number of homicides since 1960. Shootings are soaring this year, and Krasner, who is up for re-election this month, is singing the same reform tune, blaming the violence on “this city’s chronic failure to invest in prevention that the community is crying out for.”

Results are more positive in Boston, but violence is soaring under progressive prosecutors in Chicago and Baltimore.

Manhattan’s moment of decision comes next month. Let’s hope they choose wisely.