Left: A Long Island Rail Road train at Penn Station. Right: Union Square subway entrance. (
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.Sometimes a citizen can’t be blamed for asking: Is anyone safe?
In the first incident, police were notified of an off-duty female officer-involved shooting inside 2 Penn Plaza on Sept. 24 around 7 p.m. within the confines of the Midtown South Precinct. Upon arrival officers observed a 32-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the body.
EMS transported the male to a local area hospital in stable condition.
Early the following morning, at 3:38 a.m., Midtown South cops arrested the 32-year-old male, Jahmar Stewart of 681 Albany Ave. in Brooklyn, and charged him with attempted robbery and assault.
While Stewart has yet to be indicted by our press time—presumably prosecutors are gathering evidence and waiting for Stewart’s medical condition to improve—further details about the crime, and its alleged perpetrator began to emerge.
The female cop was with her husband when Stewart tried to mug them near Long Island Rail Road Track 18, where a train on the Ronkonkoma line was boarding.
Stewart, meanwhile, was living at a Brooklyn homeless shelter, at which he was arrested on Aug. 8 for attacking another resident there. Stewart pled not guilty in that case and because his top charge of third-degree assault wasn’t bail eligible, he was released on his own recognizance.
Stewart is due back in Kings County Supreme Court to face those assault and harassment charges on Oct. 9. His indictment in Manhattan is expected to be forthcoming.
Homeless Man Shoves Off-Duty Cop onto Subway Tracks
“It’s deja vu all over again.” This saying, often attributed to Yogi Berra, is but the most immediate reaction to the story of the recidivist Aaron Walker, who, free on multiple outstanding cases, used his freedom to allegedly throw an off-duty cop onto the subway tracks. Details are as follows:
At approximately 7:35 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 23, a 24-year-old NYPD officer who’d just finished working a U.N. General Assembly detail, was waiting for the L train at Third Avenue when he was punched in the back of the head, and the assailant grabbed the officer’s shirt and threw him to the subway tracks, to which the attacker also fell.
Both men clambered back up onto the platform and fought some more before Walker fled. He was apprehended at the Union Square station.
Though he’s now being held on Rikers Island without bail for attempted murder, he had four outstanding cases, two in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn, in the last seven weeks alone: three times for shoplifting, once for punching a man on the subway.
In three of those four cases, three different lawyers from Legal Aid represented Walker. A fourth Legal Aid attorney, John Burke O’Connell, is presently handling Walker’s attempted murder case.
Walker’s next scheduled court date is Oct. 15.