Crime didn’t take a vacation 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 Latest 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 12 months.
The one exceptions were felony assaults, which declined twice, and auto thefts, which dipped once.
As of last week, the speed of significant 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 deal with 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 might be headed in the identical downward spiral because the soon-to-be falling leaves.
Listed below are some chilling examples of the summer mayhem:
‘Young persons are shooting at one another’
A basketball game in The Bronx erupted in gunfire when a dispute between players led one man to drag out a handgun and open fire around 8 p.m. July 11.
As terrified people scrambled for canopy contained in 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 along with her twin 15-year-old sisters — was struck in the pinnacle, 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’s 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 “silly violence and crazy crime happening in Latest York, in broad daylight.”
“Teenagers and young people of their early 20s are shooting at one another here and that’s how innocent people get killed,” he said.
Each Tamiyah and one other unidentified girl who was shot within the leg survived the terrifying incident, which stays unsolved.
But an innocent bystander at one other shooting — Houston Baptist University basketball star Darius Lee, 21 — wasn’t so lucky and died after a gunfight broke out at an out of doors party in Harlem around 12:30 a.m. June 20.
Eight others were wounded on the gathering hosted by rapper Troy “Wealthy” Rhymer, who was recording a music video on the time.
The NYPD offered a $10,000 reward for information resulting in arrests within the fatal shooting that happened during a firefight involving handguns and scores of shots fired. So far, nobody 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 constructing 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 close-by group in what authorities suspect was gang-related violence.
Several shots ripped through the widows of the constructing at 725 Garden St., lower than two blocks from the doorway to the Bronx Zoo’s Southern Boulevard parking zone.
“The youngsters first thought it was fireworks and when my 13-year-old realized it wasn’t and glass shattered on her, she dropped to the ground,” a resident told The Post on the time.
“All we heard were people screaming. It needed to be 15-20 shots.”
No arrests have been made.
Attacked suddenly
A person was sucker-punched right into a coma during a random, unprovoked sneak attack in The Bronx that left him with a skull fracture, bleeding within 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 pinnacle.
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 subsequent 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 fees against Bui — which include harassment, a violation — “shall be elevated to felonies.”
The victim, who underwent brain surgery following the attack, was taken off a ventilator on Aug. 21 and gave the impression to be on the mend, his younger brother, Juan Cortes, said on the time.
There have been 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 automobile 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 within the slaying, which allegedly took place after he approached Rivera and commenced 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 certainly one of their mothers.
Perry ran away after the random attack but was nabbed several blocks away and charged with assault, resisting arrest and acting in a fashion injurious to a toddler under 17.
One other homeless man, Nickolas O’Keefe, 33, was arrested in a pair of unprovoked stabbings that took place inside about half-hour of one another the evening of Aug. 31.
“I saw this guy walking towards me, and I didn’t think anything of it, I used to be just walking, and I saw him reach to his back and as soon as we passed one another he just turned around and stabbed me within the back,” one victim, who asked to be identified only as Christopher, told The Post the next day.
“He just did it and kept walking.”
The opposite victim, a 27-year-old woman, also survived being stabbed within the chest.
Biker bandits run amok
Two robbers who ride around on a small, black motorcycle are believed liable 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 long-lasting 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 motive force leaned over and tried to grab a gold chain and other jewelry from her neck, knocking the lady down in the method, in response to surveillance video released by the NYPD.
Because the victim’s pal tried to drag her to safety, the motive force’s accomplice got off the bike and tried to finish the robbery before hopping back on for a speedy getaway.
The incident was certainly one of least 4 blamed on the bandits that day, culminating in a dramatic, caught-on-camera confrontation with a very good Samaritan in Upper Manhattan’s Fort George neighborhood.
One in all 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’re still on the loose, were suspected in dozens of incidents since July. “They’re just scooting throughout and so they’re out and in of traffic and so they’re flying throughout,” he said.
Sex offender on wheels
An electrical 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 person 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 person sneaked up behind a 23-year-old woman on a sidewalk and tackled her, warning, “Don’t scream, I actually 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 compelled the victim to perform a sex act.
Days later, cops linked him to an identical unsolved incident on the Manhattan Bridge around 4:30 a.m. May 15.
In that case, the person 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 person — who hasn’t been caught — pushed the victim to the bottom and compelled her to perform a sex act.
One other 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 of 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 an announcement, South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation expressed “regret” over the incident and said it “took the choice to instantly recall” and suspend Oliha “pending a full investigation from a specialized committee.”
The ministry didn’t say if Oliha can be extradited if charges were filed against him locally.
‘The subway system is a large number’
One subway rider got stabbed within the gut Aug. 22 when he tried to stop an aggressive panhandler from harassing passengers on a B train because 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 once I needed 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 on the Forty seventh-Fiftieth 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 construct and gave the impression to be carrying a big 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 large number at once.”
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 ground of the train but she refused medical treatment afterward, cops said.
Alleged attacker Jerome Gilliard, 65, was arrested 4 days later and charged with assault as a hate crime based on the lady’s age.
Gilliard has a rap sheet listing 61 arrests for crimes including rape, assault and drug possession, sources said.
One other unprovoked attack took place on an MTA bus in Harlem around 1 a.m. Aug. 11, when a person wearing a white mask suddenly got out of his seat and charged at one other passenger.
The assailant, who stays 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 protected?’
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 certainly one of the town’s Finest.
The audacious stick-up took place around 12:30 a.m. July 27 because the 23-year-old officer was unloading the trunk of his automobile within the Hunts Point section of The Bronx.
“Are you a cop?” the black-masked crook asked before swiping a Glock 17 pistol and the person’s wallet, which held money, bank cards and his police ID.
Lower than per week later, one other off-duty cop and two pals were robbed by a trio of thieves within the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn around 1:30 a.m. Aug. 2.
One in all the muggers brandished a knife and demanded the boys 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 — during 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.
“In the event you see the cops, who’re the general public servants, they’re protectors,” Jamil Ahmed, 23, said on the time.
“In the event that they are getting attacked, how are we protected in the town?”
One in all 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 opposite suspects remain at large.
Prosecute the innocent
A July 1 attack on a bodega employee 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 guide him away.
Jose Alba spent nearly per week locked up on Rikers Island following his fatal encounter with Austin Simon, 35, contained in 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 lady’s food-stamps debit card was rejected as payment.
Following demands from politicians and on a regular basis Latest Yorkers who saw the slaying as an object lesson in self-defense — in addition to 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 could be in store next.”
In addition they cited “the context of the girlfriend saying five minutes earlier that her boyfriend was going to ‘come down here at once and f–k you up.’”
The belated about-face wasn’t enough for Alba, who decided to desert the crime-ridden Big Apple and return to his hometown of Santiago within the Dominican Republic, the shop’s manager exclusively told The Post last month.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Joe Marino