Summer 2022 crime surged in nearly every major category, NYPD stats reveal
Crime didn’t take a holiday over the summer of 2022.
Worries that warm weather would bring out the Big Apple’s bad guys proved true, with repeated examples of innocent New Yorkers falling victim to gunmen, crooks, perverts and violent maniacs.
Official statistics show the NYPD tracked weekly spikes in almost every category of major crime except murders and rapes in June, July and August, compared with last year.
The only exceptions were felony assaults, which declined twice, and auto thefts, which dipped once.
As of last week, the rate of serious crimes was up 35.6% over 2021, with robberies, burglaries, grand larcenies and auto thefts rising between 32.6% and 46.6% each.
The distressing situation in late July led Mayor Eric Adams to call in vain for a special session of the state Legislature to address his repeated requests for a rollback of the controversial 2019 bail-reform law.
But with summer’s official end on Labor Day, there’s worries Gotham’s public safety could be headed in the same downward spiral as the soon-to-be falling leaves.
Here are some chilling examples of the summer mayhem:
‘Young people are shooting at each other’
A basketball game in The Bronx erupted in gunfire when a dispute between players led one man to pull out a handgun and open fire around 8 p.m. July 11.
As terrified people scrambled for cover inside the Arcilla Playground — just blocks from Yankee Stadium — stray bullets struck two 17-year-old girls at a cookout near the court.
Virginia resident Tamiyah Thomas — visiting relatives along with her twin 15-year-old sisters — was struck in the head, with the round grazing her skull but miraculously not penetrating it.
“What do you do as a parent when your twin daughters FaceTime you screaming because there is blood coming down your eldest daughter’s head?” outraged father Russ Thomas fumed after rushing to her side.
The furious father — brother of the late rapper Frederick “Fred the Godson” Thomas — also blamed city officials for “not doing enough” to stop the “stupid violence and crazy crime happening in New York, in broad daylight.”
“Teenagers and young people in their early 20s are shooting at each other here and that’s how innocent people get killed,” he said.
Both Tamiyah and another unidentified girl who was shot in the leg survived the terrifying incident, which remains unsolved.
But an innocent bystander at another shooting — Houston Baptist University basketball star Darius Lee, 21 — wasn’t so lucky and died after a gunfight broke out at an outdoor party in Harlem around 12:30 a.m. June 20.
Eight others were wounded at the gathering hosted by rapper Troy “Rich” Rhymer, who was recording a music video at the time.
The NYPD offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests in the fatal shooting that happened during a firefight involving handguns and scores of shots fired. To date, no one has been busted.
Lorreine Matthews, 73, survived her random shooting after a stray round hit her ankle as she sat on a bench outside her Bronx apartment building around 4:20 p.m. Aug. 23.
Two gunmen who began spraying bullets after hopping out of a black sedan are believed to have been aiming at a nearby group in what authorities suspect was gang-related violence.
Several shots ripped through the widows of the building at 725 Garden St., less than two blocks from the entrance to the Bronx Zoo’s Southern Boulevard parking lot.
“The kids first thought it was fireworks and when my 13-year-old realized it wasn’t and glass shattered on her, she dropped to the floor,” a resident told The Post at the time.
“All we heard were people screaming. It had to be 15-20 shots.”
No arrests have been made.
Attacked without warning
A man was sucker-punched into a coma during a random, unprovoked sneak attack in The Bronx that left him with a skull fracture, bleeding in the brain and a broken cheekbone around 10:45 p.m. Aug. 12.
Jesus Cortes, 52, was standing outside the Fuego Tipico Restaurant, minding his own business, when a surveillance camera allegedly recorded convicted sex offender Van Phu Bui, 55, as he pulled on work gloves and decked Flores from behind with a vicious roundhouse punch to the head.
As if the incident weren’t outrageous enough, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark downgraded an attempted murder charge filed by cops to misdemeanor assault, allowing Bui to be released under terms of the state’s controversial bail-reform law following his Aug. 17 arrest.
Because Bui is on lifetime parole for an armed 1994 sex attack on a 17-year-old girl, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered him arrested the next day, claiming credit despite her refusal to roll back the bail-reform law.
Bui was ordered held without bail following a court hearing at which his parole officer, Nixa Rivera, said he was a member of the infamous “Born to Kill” gang and called him an “imminent threat to the community.”
Rivera also said the charges against Bui — which include harassment, a violation — “will be elevated to felonies.”
The victim, who underwent brain surgery following the attack, was taken off a ventilator on Aug. 21 and appeared to be on the mend, his younger brother, Juan Cortes, said at the time.
There were other several other disturbing unprovoked attacks over the summer, including the fatal, broad-daylight stabbing of married father Nathaniel Rivers, 35, in front of his wife after he parked his car in The Bronx around 1:15 p.m. July 21.
A neighbor with a history of mental illness, Franklin Mesa, 19, was charged with murder in the slaying, which allegedly took place after he approached Rivera and began arguing with him.
On Aug. 9, cops busted a homeless man, Rodney Perry, 34, for allegedly pushing and punching three young girls — two 12, one 11 — in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village as they walked with one of their moms.
Perry ran away after the random attack but was nabbed several blocks away and charged with assault, resisting arrest and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17.
Another homeless man, Nickolas O’Keefe, 33, was arrested in a pair of unprovoked stabbings that took place within about 30 minutes of each other the evening of Aug. 31.
“I saw this guy walking towards me, and I didn’t think anything of it, I was just walking, and I saw him reach to his back and as soon as we passed each other he just turned around and stabbed me in the back,” one victim, who asked to be identified only as Christopher, told The Post the following day.
“He just did it and kept walking.”
The other victim, a 27-year-old woman, also survived being stabbed in the chest.
Biker bandits run amok
Two robbers who ride around on a small, black motorcycle are believed responsible for dozens of brazen, broad-daylight capers across Upper Manhattan — including one just steps from the famed Guggenheim Museum.
A 28-year-old woman and a friend were walking on East 89th Street in Manhattan near the iconic modern art exhibition hall around 12:15 p.m Aug. 27 when the crooks rode toward them on the sidewalk.
After stopping alongside the pair, the driver leaned over and tried to snatch a gold chain and other jewelry from her neck, knocking the woman down in the process, according to surveillance video released by the NYPD.
As the victim’s pal tried to pull her to safety, the driver’s accomplice got off the bike and tried to complete the robbery before hopping back on for a speedy getaway.
The incident was one of least four blamed on the bandits that day, culminating in a dramatic, caught-on-camera confrontation with a good Samaritan in Upper Manhattan’s Fort George neighborhood.
One of the crooks fired three shots at a 28-year-old man they chased down a sidewalk before the do-gooder intervened, fought with the robber and grabbed the gun from his hand.
NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said the bandits, who are still on the loose, were suspected in dozens of incidents since July. “They’re just scooting all over and they’re in and out of traffic and they’re flying all over,” he said.
Sex offender on wheels
An electric bike rider made his way across Manhattan from the Upper West Side to the East Village — sexually assaulting two women in separate incidents about an hour apart.
Surveillance video captured the man riding behind his first victim as he stalked her in a crosswalk at Central Park West and West 82nd Street around 4 a.m. July 16.
After ditching the bike, the man sneaked up behind a 23-year-old woman on a sidewalk and tackled her, warning, “Don’t scream, I have a knife!” before molesting her.
He ran away and was later recorded riding the e-bike southbound on Central Park West.
Around 5 a.m., he struck again near East Fourth Street and Avenue A, where he hopped off the bike and grabbed a 28-year-old woman.
After again threatening that he was armed with a knife, the assailant exposed his genitals and forced the victim to perform a sex act.
Days later, cops linked him to a similar unsolved incident on the Manhattan Bridge around 4:30 a.m. May 15.
In that case, the man used the bike to stalk a 26-year-old woman on the pedestrian walkway, then hopped off and grabbed her hair from behind.
After pulling out a knife, the man — who hasn’t been caught — pushed the victim to the ground and forced her to perform a sex act.
Another alleged serial sex offender, Scott Blake, 55, was busted Aug. 24 in a string of buttocks-groping incidents in Midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village and the East Village.
Blake allegedly targeted seven women in their 20s and 30s during a sickening spree that began July 20 and ended Aug. 1, cops said.
On Aug. 21, a South Sudanese diplomat, Charles Dickens Imeni Oliha, 46, was accused of raping a 24-year-old neighbor after forcing his way into her Upper Manhattan apartment.
Oliha was taken into custody for questioning but released without charges after invoking diplomatic immunity,. He then fled the US.
In a statement, South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation expressed “regret” over the incident and said it “took the decision to immediately recall” and suspend Oliha “pending a full investigation from a specialized committee.”
The ministry didn’t say if Oliha would be extradited if charges were filed against him locally.
‘The subway system is a mess’
One subway rider got stabbed in the gut Aug. 22 when he tried to stop an aggressive panhandler from harassing passengers on a B train as it barreled through Midtown Manhattan.
“I just told him, ‘Leave me alone, like just back off,'” Fuentes said from his bed at Weill Cornell Hospital Center in Manhattan later that day.
“He just became aggressive and that’s when I had to defend myself.”
Fuentes, a food deliveryman who lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said the fight “got ugly” but he didn’t realize he’d been stabbed until he got off the train at the 47th-50th Streets/Rockefeller Center station and saw his T-shirt was soaked with blood.
Cops later released a video clip of the suspect, a balding, goateed man who’s about 5-feet-9 with a husky build and appeared to be carrying a large duffel bag with several smaller bags attached to it.
The unidentified man has yet to be caught.
“It sucks what’s happening,” Fuentes said. “The subway system is a mess right now.”
In other transit-related violence, an 80-year-old woman was repeatedly slapped on her head, back and shoulder on Aug. 6 while riding a southbound No. 6 train on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The unprovoked attack took place around 4:30 p.m. and caused the victim to fall to the floor of the train but she refused medical treatment afterward, cops said.
Alleged attacker Jerome Gilliard, 65, was arrested four days later and charged with assault as a hate crime based on the woman’s age.
Gilliard has a rap sheet listing 61 arrests for crimes including rape, assault and drug possession, sources said.
Another unprovoked attack took place on an MTA bus in Harlem around 1 a.m. Aug. 11, when a man wearing a white mask suddenly got out of his seat and charged at another passenger.
The assailant, who remains at large, then used a knife to stab the 38-year-old man’s right forearm and slash his right hand as terrified riders rushed to get away.
‘How are we safe?’
Even NYPD cops weren’t immune from surging crime this summer, with several officers getting mugged while off-duty — including by a brazen armed robber who knew his victim was one of the city’s Finest.
The audacious stick-up took place around 12:30 a.m. July 27 as the 23-year-old officer was unloading the trunk of his car in the Hunts Point section of The Bronx.
“Are you a cop?” the black-masked crook asked before swiping a Glock 17 pistol and the man’s wallet, which held cash, credit cards and his police ID.
Less than a week later, another off-duty cop and two pals were robbed by a trio of thieves in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn around 1:30 a.m. Aug. 2.
One of the muggers brandished a knife and demanded the men hand over their watches, which they did.
A more vicious incident took place when three men traveling in a black Honda sedan jumped off-duty cop Muhammed Chowdhury, 48, while he jogged near his Bronx home around 10:30 a.m. Aug. 23.
The attack left the 18-year NYPD veteran with a fractured skull and bleeding in his brain.
Officials said the robbery — in which Chowdhury’s wallet, cellphone and keys was stolen — fit a pattern of 19 similar crimes in The Bronx and Queens since Aug. 1.
Chowdhury’s nephew lamented the message sent by the incident.
“If you see the police officers, who are the public servants, they are protectors,” Jamil Ahmed, 23, said at the time.
“If they are getting attacked, how are we safe in the city?”
One of Chowdhury’s alleged assailants — Oshawn Logan, 18 — was tracked down and charged with gang assault and robbery on Aug. 26 and ordered held on $50,000 bail pending trial.
All the other suspects remain at large.
Prosecute the innocent
A July 1 attack on a bodega worker in Upper Manhattan sparked widespread outrage after a 61-year-old immigrant wound up charged with murder for stabbing the ex-con who stormed behind the counter, pushed him against a wall of merchandise and tried to lead him away.
Jose Alba spent nearly a week locked up on Rikers Island following his fatal encounter with Austin Simon, 35, inside the Blue Moon convenience store in Washington Heights shortly after 11 p.m.
Simon was enraged because his girlfriend allegedly accused Alba of grabbing a bag of chips from her 10-year-old daughter’s hand when the woman’s food-stamps debit card was rejected as payment.
Following demands from politicians and everyday New Yorkers who saw the slaying as an object lesson in self-defense — as well as a series of front-page Post reports — progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg finally decided to drop the case July 19.
In court papers, prosecutors acknowledged they couldn’t prove Alba “was not justified in his use of deadly physical force,” noting Simon’s unhinged actions likely led the “older and shorter” Alba to fear “what might be in store next.”
They also cited “the context of the girlfriend saying five minutes earlier that her boyfriend was going to ‘come down here right now and f–k you up.’”
The belated about-face wasn’t enough for Alba, who decided to abandon the crime-ridden Big Apple and return to his hometown of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, the store’s manager exclusively told The Post last month.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Joe Marino
