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.
Two robbers on a motorcycle are believed to be responsible for a dozen robberies in Manhattan.DCPI The bikers robbing a woman on the Upper East Side.DCPI
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.
Police at the scene of the robbery outside of the Guggenheim Museum on August 27, 2022.Robert Miller for NY Post
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.
Surveillance footage of a man on an e-bike who sexually assaulted a woman in Manhattan on July 17, 2022.DCPI
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.
A sketch of the suspect behind the string of sexual assaults.DCPI
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.”
South Sudanese diplomat Charles Dickens Imeni Oliha was accused of raping a neighbor in Manhattan, but wasn’t charged due to diplomatic immunity.Facebook / Charles Dickens Oliha fled the country after being released without charges.Matthew McDermott for NY Post
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.
The suspect who allegedly stabbed a man on a subway in Manhattan on August 22, 2022.DCPI
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.
The suspect who allegedly attacked an 80-year-old woman on a subway in Manhattan on August 6, 2022. DCPI
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.
NYPD at the scene of where an off-duty cop was robbed in Brooklyn on August 2, 2022.Robert Mecea for NY Post
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.
Off-duty NYPD cop Muhammed Chowdhury was brutally attacked and robbed in the Bronx on August 23, 2022.Robert MIller for NY Post
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.
Bodega worker Jose Alba fatally stabbed a man in self defense after getting attacked in his Manhattan store on July 1, 2022.
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.”
Alba was initially charged with murder for the incident before the charges were dropped.Alec Tabak for NY Post
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.’”