A woman was arrest for her alleged role in the shocking hammer attack of a New York City Health Department scientist at a city subway stop after the suspect spent $19 with the victim’s credit card.
Denise Alston, 57, of Queens, was arrested Friday night after police said she used Nina Rothschild’s credit card a day after the 58-year-old city employee was kicked down the stairs and bashed in the head with a hammer 13 times at the Queens Plaza station in Long Island City.
On Sunday, police had arrest 57-year-old career criminal William Blount, whose criminal record goes back to the 1980s, for the assault, but found Alston in possession of Rothchild’s credit cards, store cards and NYC ID.
Alston was charged with criminal possession of stolen property, larceny and identify theft and faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
Blount – who faces attempted murder, robbery and assault charges – has a lengthy criminal record and had broken his ankles while attempting a prison break in South Carolina after a guard was murdered in 2000, NBC reported.
William Blount, pictured center, was arrested on Sunday in connection to the hammer attack of a New York City Health Department scientist last week. Blount is a career criminal who spent more than a decade in prison for back-to-back crimes in NYC and South Carolina
Pictured: Nina Rothschild, the 58-year-old NYC Department of Health employee who was kicked down the stairs and had her head repeatedly hit a hammer. A se
Blount allegedly kicked Rothchild down the stairs at the Queens Plaza subway station in Long Island City and proceeded to pull out a hammer and attack her
Police said Blount had been arrested multiple times in the 1980s for robberies and drug crimes in New York City and South Carolina.
Records show Blount served three years in prison for attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in Queens and was paroled in March 1990, the New York Daily News reported.
Months later, Blount was arrested for attempted robbery and served two years in jail and was released on June 1993.
Blount went on to attempt another robbery was arrested in 1994, serving six years until he was released, again, in March 2000.
Four months later, the convict went down to South Carolina and broke into a Bojangles restaurant in Richland County with his brother-in-law and kidnapped two employees, forcing them to open the safe, NBC reported.
Blount attempted a prison escape for that sentence on September 17, 2000, after inmates killed a guard as part of a larger jailbreak. He tried to join the escape, but broke both his ankles jumping off the prison roof.
He was quickly caught and charged with conspiracy to escape.
The career criminal, who now uses a cane to walk, did not appear to have another crime on record until his brutal assault on Rothchild last week.
Surveillance footage from outside the station in Queens Plaza, in Long Island City, showed a man, reported to be Blount, walking with a cane as he approached Rothschild, who carefully walked down the stairs to the subway platform last Thursday at 11.22 pm.
Blount reportedly began by kicking her in the back and attempting to knock her over, but when Rothschild stays on her feet and appears to try and slowly flee, he pulls out a hammer, according to authorities.
Police said he then proceeded to bash her in the head 13 times while she struggled, with the final hit knocking her over.
Blount reportedly stole two cellphones, debit cards, credit cards and an unknown amount of money from Rothschild, according to police, who was taken to nearby Weill Cornell Medical in critical condition.
The attack comes just one week after Adams announced his Subway Safety Plan initiative and deployed 1,000 additional officers, as well as teams of health workers, to crack down on rising crime in the subways.
Surveillance footage from outside the station in Queens Plaza, in Long Island City, showed a man, reported to be Blount, walking with a cane
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 escort Blount, 57, after his arrest on Sunday for allegedly attacking 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
The attack is the latest in a string of stabbings and robberies that have occurred in the past week in New York City’s subway system, which serves more than 3 million people daily
Adams said NYPD officers would be deployed on the A, E, 1, 2, N and R lines to ensure public safety.
Both the E and R trains run through the Queens Plaza Station where Thursday night’s attack occurred. The station is in the eastern-end of Long Island City, an affluent area home to many young professionals and where Amazon considered opening its second headquarters back in 2019.
An MTA worker at the station told the New York Post he was surprised about 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 the new Subway Safety Plan initiative on Friday as a way to crackdown on crime and violence in the city’s transit system
Under Adams’ plan, officers and service workers would be part of ‘End of the Line’ teams with officers to make sure the trains are cleared during their final stops.
The health workers would be there to help the mentally ill and guide them to the city’s support services, while the officers are directed to enforce laws against laying down, sleeping, outstretching, littering, drug use and aggressive behavior towards riders.
The plan came after a spate of recent crimes committed by homeless individuals, including a break-dancer who was stabbed by a homeless man last Thursday and Michelle Go’s murder, where the 40-year-old was pushed beneath a train last month by a homeless man with a history of mental illness.
‘Let’s be clear on this, [the homeless] are not dangerous,’ Adams said. ‘The vast majority are not dangerous, but we have to be honest about the number of individuals dealing with mental health crises. They are dangerous to themselves and dangerous to New Yorkers.’
The mayor’s plan received support from Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said the state would deliver 600 new psychiatric beds and another 500 beds at shelters in the city to try and provide help for those currently living in the subways, many of whom suffer from severe mental illness.
‘We will accomplish what new Yorkers deserve, and that is a safe ride on our subway system while also recognizing the very real humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding before our eyes for far too long.’
The city has deployed an additional 1,000 officers to patrol the subway system starting Friday
Thursday’s attack happened at the Queens Plaza Station, which services the E and R lines that were supposed to be enforced better under the Mayor’s plan. An MTA worker at the station said he was shocked to learn about the attack because the area is usual safe
But despite their efforts, crime continues to plague the city’s transit system, which serves more than 3 million people every day.
New York City subway stabbings and slashings have spiked 29 percent in the last last year, with 182 incidents compared to 141 a year before in 2020.
And 2022 is squaring up to be even worse. So far this year there have been 27 subway attacks on passengers – a 35 percent increase on the 20 reported for the same period of 2021.
One of the latest victims, a Trader Joe’s employee named Kevin Young, was repeatedly slashed across the face, hand and behind the ear after accidentally bumping into into a disturbed passenger on February 12.
The incident occurred around 5:45 am at the Union Square subway station on East 14th street as Young tried to step off a southbound Q train on his way to work to begin his 6 am shift.
‘Subway crime is out of control,’ fumed Young, 36, to the New York Post.
‘He’s trying to get on the train and I’m trying to get out and after a shoving match he goes for his blade,’ Young recalled.
‘I tried to defend myself as much as possible. As soon as I held him down, he got his blade and went 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 struck by a homeless man wielding a metal pole on her way home from her shift on Monday morning
Young required 25 stitches to close his wounds, and underwent surgery at Bellevue Hospital on Thursday to fix some nerve damage in his left middle finger that he sustained during the attack.
‘And I have to get pin plates inserted into my right index finger so the bones could grow back,’ he groaned.
His assailant, who has yet to be identified or arrested as of Saturday, was last seen wearing a black jacket, black jeans, black Adidas bag and eyeglasses, police said.
The attack on Young comes just days after a 39-year-old woman was slashed in the forehead by another woman with a boxcutter while traveling on a 5 train at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.
On Monday, just hours before Adams’ safety plan was set to go in effect, one man was attacked with a hatchet and a woman had her nose ring crushed by a homeless man wielding a metal pipe.
The first of the brutal attacks on Monday came at around 12.30 a.m. when Kyle Westby, 42, was on his way home from a late dinner out with his girlfriend when he arrived at the Prospect Heights station and saw two men, one of whom asked ‘Why are you staring at me,’ the New York Post reports.
‘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 said ‘Officers, this man swung at me with an ax.’ Immediately, they went down and apprehended him.’
Police report they took Robert Griffith, 58, into custody following the attack, and charged him with attempted assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, saying Griffith also allegedly had a punch dagger and screwdriver.
Hours later, Evelina Rivera, a 30-year-old chef, was struck by a homeless man wielding a metal pole on her way home from her shift.
She was on her way home on a No. 4 train heading to the Bronx at 2.39 a.m. when a homeless man, who had earlier poured honey over himself, asked her and another female passenger: ‘Oh would you guys just shut the f*** up?’
‘We’re like, ‘Anyway,’ and we keep talking, and he’s like ‘I’ll make you shut up,’ she told the Post.
At that point, she said, the man tried to strike the other woman, ‘misses her by a millimeter’ and instead broke the subway window, as the would-be victim used pepper spray to blind him.
Unable to see, Rivera said, the man started swinging wildly and ‘hit me so hard the ball came out of my [septum] piercing. It’s crooked.’
Rivera said she was ‘about to have a panic attack’ following 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 reports, they patrolled the subway to look for the suspect, who is described as having facial piercings and was last seen wearing all black, but were unable to find him.
Several other New Yorkers were also attacked in vicious slashings over the weekend, with some subway stops roped off by police as blood stained the walls.
In the aftermath, MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said the attacks should not be considered ‘normal.’
‘People who would prey on New Yorkers riding transit should get the message that it’s not going to be tolerated,’ he said in a statement to the New York Times, adding they ‘underscore the urgent need’ for the new safety plan.
A spokesman for the mayor, Fabien Levy, also said that Adams strongly condemned the attacks, noting that they ‘shouldn’t be subject to sweeping generalizations.’
‘We should not conflate such isolated acts of violence on the subway with broad statements about the behavioral and mental health challenges the city is confronting, or the issue of aiding those experiencing homeless that the mayor’s plan directly addresses.’
