A 57-year-old man has been arrested after kicking a woman down the stairs of a New York subway station and smashing her repeatedly in the head with a hammer – just days after Mayor Eric Adams promised to quell violence in the transit system.
William Blount was pictured as he was escorted from Transit District 20 on Sunday after being arrested for the hammering of Nina Rothschild at Queens Plaza Tube Station on Thursday.
Blount, who was accused of attempted murder, robbery and assault, allegedly kicked the 57-year-old city health worker down the stairs and hit her repeatedly with a hammer in a subway station, leaving her seriously injured.
Surveillance footage from outside of Queens Plaza, Long Island City, shows a man reportedly Blount walking with a cane as he approaches Rothschild as she carefully descends stairs to a subway platform on Thursday. at 23:22.
Blount started by kicking her in the back and trying to knock her down, but when Rothschild stayed on his feet and seemed to be trying to escape slowly, he pulled out a hammer, according to authorities.
He then continued to hit her in the head 13 times while she was fighting, with the last blow knocking her down.
William Blount, pictured center, is arrested on Sunday for the hammer attack of a woman at the Queens Plaza subway station Thursday
Pictured: Nina Rothschild, the 57-year-old city health worker who was kicked down the stairs and had her head repeatedly hit a hammer
Blount, pictured center, as he is escorted by police from the Briarwood subway station in Queens
Police escort Blount, 57, after his vicious attack on Nina Rothschild, also 57, at a Queens subway station on Thursday
Blount, pictured being taken to the back of a police car, has a half-dozen prior arrests including charges of robbery and criminal possession of a controlled substance
Rothschild, pictured, was taken to nearby Weill Cornell Medical in critical condition
Blount, whose last known address is in Astoria, had half a dozen previous arrests, including charges of robbery and criminal possession of a controlled substance, then snatched her bag and fled, according to the New York Post.
He was convicted in the late 1980s of attempting to criminally sell a controlled substance, records show.
Police found the woman lying on the ground, with a broken skull and a torn head.
Blount reportedly stole two cell phones, debit cards, credit cards and an unknown amount of money from Rothschild, according to police, who were taken to nearby Weill Cornell Medical in critical condition.
The attack comes just a week after Adams announced his initiative for a subway safety plan and sent 1,000 additional staff and teams of health workers to tackle rising crime in the subways.
The man in the video kicked the woman down the stairs at the Queens Plaza subway station and proceeded to pull out a hammer and attack her
He bashed her head 13 times with the weapon and stole her purse
The suspect walks out slowly from the subway, with both cane and hammer in hand
Police investigating the case were on the lookout for this man, who they say attacked the woman on Thursday night, prior to Blount’s arrest
The attack is the latest in a series of stabbing and robberies committed last week in the New York subway, which serves more than 3 million people a day.
Adams said NYPD staff will be stationed on lines A, E, 1, 2, N and R to ensure public safety.
Trains E and R pass through Queens Plaza, where the attack took place on Thursday night. The station is at the eastern end of Long Island City, a wealthy area home to many young professionals and where Amazon is considering opening its second headquarters in 2019.
An MTA employee at the station told the New York Post that he was surprised by the attack in the community.
“Look around, they’ve done a lot with this area, so it’s usually pretty safe,” he said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a new initiative for a subway safety plan on Friday as a way to curb crime and violence in the city’s transportation system
According to Adams’ plan, officers and service staff will be part of the End of the Line teams with officers to make sure trains are released at their final stops.
Health workers will be there to help the mentally ill and refer them to city support services, while staff are focused on enforcing laws against bed, sleep, stretching, waste disposal, drug use and aggressive behavior towards riders.
The plan comes after a series of recent crimes committed by homeless people, including a break dancer who was stabbed by a homeless man last Thursday and the murder of Michel Go, in which the 40-year-old was pushed under the train last month by a homeless man with a history of mental illness.
“Let’s make this clear, [the homeless] are not dangerous,” Adams said. “The vast majority are not dangerous, but we must be honest about the number of people who deal with mental health crises. They are dangerous to themselves and dangerous to New Yorkers. ‘
The mayor’s plan received support from Governor Kati Hochul, who said the state would supply 600 new psychiatric beds and another 500 beds in shelters in the city to try to provide assistance to those currently living in the subways, many of whom suffer from severe mental illness.
“We will achieve what New Yorkers deserve, and that is safe travel in our subway system, while acknowledging the very real humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding before our eyes for too long.”
The city has deployed an additional 1,000 officers to patrol the subway system starting Friday
The attack on Thursday took place at Queens Plaza, which serves lines E and R, which should have been better implemented according to the mayor’s plan. An MTA employee at the station said he was shocked to learn of the attack because the area is usually safe
But despite their efforts, crime continues to plague the city’s transportation system, which serves more than 3 million people every day.
New York’s subway drills and cuts have risen 29 percent in the past year, 182 incidents, compared with 141 in the previous year in 2020.
And 2022 will be even worse. So far this year, there have been 27 attacks on subway passengers – a 35% increase over the 20 reported for the same period in 2021.
One of the latest victims, a Trader Joe employee named Kevin Young, was repeatedly cut in the face, arm and behind the ear after accidentally crashing into a disturbed passenger on 12 February.
The incident happened around 5:45 a.m. at Union Square Subway Station on East 14th Street when Young tried to get off the South Q train on his way to work to start his shift at 6 p.m.
“Subway crime is out of control,” Young, 36, told the New York Post.
“He’s trying to get on the train, and I’m trying to get out, and after a push-up game, he grabs his blade,” Young recalls.
“I tried to defend myself as much as possible. As soon as I held him, he took his blade and set to work. ‘
New York City has seen a nearly 50 percent spike in criminal incidents this year when compared to the same span in 2021. Felony assaults have increased by more than 20 percent, while shootings are up by a marked 30 percent
Evelina Rivera, a 30-year-old chef, was hit by a homeless man with a metal rod as she was returning from her shift Monday morning
What does Adams’s subway safety plan for NYC look like?
The mayor’s plan outlines how the Adams administration, in partnership with the MTA and other government agencies, will address these concurrent challenges to New York’s subway systems. Investing in people will provide immediate support and protection for New Yorkers, while investing in places such as accommodation, safe havens, stabilizing beds and wellness vans for the homeless, as well as changes in local, state and federal policies will provide medium-term and long-term solutions. They include:
- Deploy up to 30 joint response teams bringing together DHS, the Department of Health and Mental Health, the NYPD and community providers in high-demand locations across the city
- Training NYPD staff in the city’s subway system to enforce the rules of conduct of the MTA and the New York City Transit Authority in a fair and transparent manner
- Expanding the B-HEARD’s Emergency Response Team to six new areas, more than doubling the areas covered to 11. These teams will expand the already successful pilot response to non-violent 911 mental health calls with professionals on mental health
- Incorporate medical services into DHS sites serving vulnerable homeless people. DHS ‘Extended Safe Asylum Programs and Stabilizing Beds will offer on-site physical and behavioral health care to meet customer needs immediately
- Immediate improvement of inter-government coordination with weekly meetings of the “Working Group on Improved Work”, which brings together senior leaders from 13 city and state agencies for rapid problem solving
- Creating new Drop-in Centers to provide people with an immediate way to get indoors, and exploring the possibility of locating Drop-in Centers near key metro stations for people to go directly from trains and platforms to safe spaces
- Simplifying the process of accommodation in a maintenance home and reducing the amount of documents required to prove eligibility
- Calls on the state government to expand resources for psychiatric beds and amend Kendra’s law to improve the provision of mental health care for New Yorkers in assisted outpatient treatment
- Requirement – instead of asking – everyone to leave the train and the station at the end of the line
Young needed 25 stitches to close his wounds, and underwent surgery at Bellevue Hospital on Thursday to repair nerve damage to his left middle finger during the attack.
“And I have to put pin pins in my right index finger so the bones can grow back,” he groaned.
His attacker, who has not yet been identified or arrested as of Saturday, was last seen wearing a black jacket, black jeans, a black Adidas bag and glasses, police said.
The attack on Young comes just days after a 39-year-old woman was cut in the forehead by another woman with a boxing knife while traveling by train 5 on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.
On Monday, just hours before Adams’ security plan went into effect, a man was attacked with an ax and a woman was crushed on her nose ring by a homeless man holding a metal pipe.
The first of Monday’s brutal attacks came at around 12:30 p.m., when Kyle Westby, 42, was returning home from a late dinner with his girlfriend when he arrived at Prospect Heights station and saw two men, one of whom asked, “Why are you staring at me?” , writes the New York Post.
“I saw him reach into his jacket and pull out a brown object,” Westby told the Post. “He swung at me and I ran away, so I ran up the stairs and thank God the cops were there.
I told the police, this man swung an ax at me. “They immediately went down and detained him. ‘
Police say they have detained Robert Griffith, 58, after the attack and accused him of attempted assault, threat and criminal possession of a weapon, saying Griffith also had a dagger and a screwdriver.
Hours later, 30-year-old chef Evelina Rivera was hit by a homeless man with a metal rod as she was returning from her shift.
She was returning to train 4, which was heading for the Bronx at 2.39 am, when a homeless man who had previously poured honey asked her and another passenger: “Oh, boys, just shut the hell up ** * up? ‘
“We’re like, ‘Anyway, and we keep talking, and he’s like,’ I’m going to shut you up, ‘” she told the Post.
At that moment, she said, the man tried to hit the other woman, “dropped her by a millimeter” and instead broke the subway window because the future victim used pepper spray to blind him.
Unable to see, Rivera said, the man began to sway wildly and hit me so hard that the ball came out of my piercing barrier. It’s wrong. ‘
Rivera said she was about to have a panic attack “after the attack” and she and the other woman got off at the next stop to report the incident to police.
But when the cops showed up, the Post reported, they patrolled the subway to look for a suspect who was described as having a facial piercing and was last seen dressed entirely in black, but was unable to find him.
Several other New Yorkers were also attacked during the brutal weekend raids, with some subway stops interrupted by police as blood stained the walls.
MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan later said the attacks should not be considered “normal”.
“People who would be victims of New Yorkers traveling on public transportation need to understand that this will not be tolerated,” he told the New York Times, adding that they “emphasize the urgent need” for the new security plan.
A spokesman for Mayor Fabien Levy also said Adams strongly condemned the attacks, noting that “they should not be the subject of broad summaries”.
“We must not combine such isolated acts of violence in the subway with broad statements about the behavioral and mental health challenges facing the city, or with the issue of helping the homeless, to which the mayor’s plan directly addresses. “