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    Witnesses to Sydney Mall Stabbing Describe Harrowing Scenes

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    Witnesses to the stabbings at a mall in a Sydney, Australia, on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.Some shoppers hid inside as alarms blared. Others ran out, screaming as they passed by bodies on the floor.When Gavin Lockhart, 37, saw people running as he sat inside a coffee shop at the mall, there was a moment of confusion. “Is it a celebrity?” he first thought. “Is it because of a gunman?”Then he fled when he heard, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!”He followed the coffee shop’s owner, Michael Dunkley, 57, who also brought his wife, who was cooking, and two baristas into a staffroom where they could lock the door. Mr. Dunkley said afterward that just one thought was in his mind when the screaming began: “I have to get my wife and staff to safety.”Mr. Dunkley left the room to try to chase down the attacker, whom he described as a thin man with a beard and short hair, wearing dark green pants and a green jersey.Then, Mr. Dunkley recounted, he saw a police officer attempt to stop the assailant. When the officer told the man to put his knife down, he lunged toward her with his weapon, the cafe owner said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mary Ann Zielonko, Partner of Kitty Genovese, Dies at 85

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      The murder of Ms. Genovese, and her neighbors’ reaction to it, generated headlines. The nature of her relationship with Ms. Zielonko was a different story.For 60 years, Kitty Genovese has endured as a symbol of big-city apathy, the victim not only of a knife-wielding killer but also of her neighbors’ reluctance to get involved. Two weeks after a man named Winston Moseley stalked, raped and murdered her in Queens late at night in March 1964, a New York Times article reported that 38 of her neighbors had heard her cries for help, yet did nothing.That account turned out to be significantly flawed. Most of those 38 people were unaware of what was actually happening; they thought they were merely hearing a fight, perhaps a lovers’ quarrel. Investigations later determined that few of them had caught even a glimpse of the attacks. Nonetheless, the death of 28-year-old Catherine Susan Genovese has long remained a paradigm of urban anonymity and indifference.Kitty Genovese at work as a bar manager in an undated photo.New York Daily News, via Associated PressSomething else was out of kilter in the reporting back then. Ms. Genovese had been living for a year with Mary Ann Zielonko. In those days they were typically referred to as roommates. In fact, they were lovers. When the police investigators became aware of that, they questioned Ms. Zielonko as a possible suspect. After a night of bowling with friends, she had been asleep in their Kew Gardens apartment while the attack took place below.“I was very numb, I would say, from the whole thing,” she told Retro Report, a series of video documentaries exploring old news stories and their lasting effects, in 2016. “I felt, wow, she was so close, and I was sleeping, and I didn’t know what happened, and that I could have saved her. You know? That’s what I really think still.”Ms. Zielonko died on Wednesday at her home in Rutland, Vt., where she had lived since 2000. She was 85. Rebecca Jones, her domestic partner and sole survivor, said the cause was aspiration pneumonia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawmaker Is Left With ‘Lifetime Trauma’ as Attacker Pleads Guilty

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      Andrey Desmond pleaded guilty to three felony charges in the attack on Maryam Khan, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, last June.It has been nearly 10 months since a man attacked Maryam Khan, the first Muslim elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives, outside an Eid al-Adha prayer service in Hartford, Conn. She is still struggling to heal, she said.“I have a lot of things to get through, both emotionally and physically,” Ms. Khan said. “I’m still working on trying to heal and process what happened.”But she felt some closure in a courtroom on Tuesday, she said, when she watched her attacker plead guilty to felony charges related to the attack.The man, Andrey Desmond, 30, of New Britain, Conn., pleaded guilty to attempted third-degree sexual assault, strangulation and risk of injury to a child, according to the clerk’s office at the State Superior Court in Hartford.“He claimed to understand what was happening, and for me, personally, it was helpful to be there and to witness that,” Ms. Khan said.Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Desmond is required to serve five years in prison, register as a sex offender and receive mental health treatment after he is released. His sentencing is scheduled for June 4.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Subway Death in NYC Gives Insight Into the City’s Challenges

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      The man charged with shoving a man from a subway platform had a violent history, according to officials. The man who died was recovering from his own troubled past, his family said.Before the paths of Jason Volz and Carlton McPherson collided in a terrible moment on a Harlem subway platform on Monday, their lives had seemed to be heading in opposite directions.Mr. McPherson had been hospitalized at least half a dozen times since last year for mental health treatment, according to someone who has seen some of his medical records. A neighbor in the Bronx said he sometimes slept in a hallway closet in his grandmother’s building because she would not let him into her apartment. Last October, a man whom prosecutors believe to be Mr. McPherson — he had the same name and birth year — was charged with beating a Brooklyn homeless shelter employee with a cane.Mr. Volz, 54, was recovering from addiction and had also endured homelessness, but had gotten sober two years ago and had just moved into a new apartment, his ex-wife said.On Monday night, the police say, Mr. McPherson, 24, walked up to Mr. Volz on the uptown platform of the 125th Street station on Lexington Avenue and shoved him in front of an oncoming No. 4 train.Responding police officers, who had been on another part of the platform, found him lifeless beneath the train. His death was a recurrence of the ultimate New York City nightmare, and another example of the difficulty of preventing violence on the subway despite years of efforts by state and city authorities to keep people struggling with severe mental illness out of the transit system.Mayor Eric Adams, who has watched crime in the subway largely defy his attempts to rein it in, sounded a note of defeat on Tuesday, acknowledging that the presence of police officers had not been enough to stop Monday’s attack.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Killed by Train After He Is Pushed Onto Subway Tracks, Police Say

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      The attack at 125th Street in East Harlem was unprovoked, a police spokeswoman said, and a man is in custody.A man was killed Monday evening after being pushed onto the subway tracks in an unprovoked attack at the 125th Street station at Lexington Avenue in East Harlem, according to the Police Department.At 6:48 p.m., a man on the uptown platform shoved the person onto the tracks in front of the oncoming No. 4 train, which was unable to stop, a police spokeswoman said. The suspected attacker is in custody, according to the spokeswoman. The police did not identify either the victim or the suspect.Train service at the station resumed by 9 p.m., but a large number of police officers remained at the scene. “The subway has been insane lately,” Ray Velez, 60, from the Bronx, said as he waited on the 125th St. platform two hours after the attack. “You have to look everywhere now. It’s just out of control.”The attack is the latest in a series of violent episodes that have led officials to increase the police presence in the subway and seek to reassure New Yorkers that the system is safe. Earlier this month, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she would deploy the National Guard and the State Police into the system to increase security and ease New Yorkers’ fears. But less than two weeks after Ms. Hochul’s announcement, a fight on the A train that ended with a shooting reinforced the difficulties of policing every inch of the sprawling system. In that confrontation, captured in a dramatic video recorded by a passenger, a man who had been menacing a rider was first stabbed and then shot with his own handgun. Karla Marie Sanford contributed reporting. More

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      After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

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      Even with the National Guard patrolling the system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn on Thursday. Others remain unfazed.The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Subway Cameras Led to Arrests in Bronx D Train Shooting, NYPD Says

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      Investigators say that an early morning argument on a D train last week ended with the fatal shooting of William Alvarez, 45.The police on Monday said footage from a surveillance camera in a subway car helped lead to the arrests of three people in connection with the fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man last week.Justin Herde, 24, Alfredo Trinidad, 42, and Betty Cotto, 38, were in custody in connection with the killing of William Alvarez, 45, of the Bronx, according to the New York Police Department.Mr. Alvarez was riding a southbound D train around 5 a.m. on Friday morning when the three suspects boarded at the Fordham Road station and got into an argument with him, the police said. Mr. Alvarez was shot in the chest, Michael M. Kemper, the Police Department’s chief of transit, said at a Monday news conference. Chief Kemper added that Mr. Alvarez’s attackers fled the train at the 182nd-183rd Streets station.About 1,000 of the system’s roughly 6,500 cars are equipped with cameras, part of a broader effort begun in 2022 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which plans to install cameras in the rest of the cars by the end of this year.Killings on the subway are rare, but attract intense public attention. This year there have been two other fatal incidents in the system. Earlier this month, a 35-year-old man was killed and five other people were wounded in a shooting at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx during the evening rush hour. And in January, a 45-year-old father of three was shot on a No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument.Transit leaders are under intense pressure to bring ridership back to prepandemic levels, and making the system feel safe is critical to that mission. Ridership rose by about 3 percent in January, hovering on average at about 3 million daily passengers. In 2019, daily ridership was about 5 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      15-Year-Old Arrested in Times Square Shooting That Injured a Tourist

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      The teen, Jesus Alejandro Rivas Figueroa, is accused of firing at a security guard and instead hitting a woman from Brazil.A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Friday, accused of shooting a Brazilian tourist in Times Square the night before and then firing twice at a police officer while fleeing the scene, officials said.The arrest came about an hour after the police said at a news conference that they were seeking the teenager, Jesus Alejandro Rivas Figueroa, in the shooting of the tourist, a 37-year-old woman who was hit once in the leg. Her injury was not life-threatening, and she had left the hospital as of Friday afternoon, the police said.Police officials said the teenager was from Venezuela and had been staying at a Manhattan migrant shelter following his arrival in New York last fall, one person among the tens of thousands of people who have come to the city after crossing into the United States at the southern border.He was taken into custody in Yonkers, officials said. He is also considered a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx and a second shooting in Times Square last month, said John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol.Mr. Figueroa, a second 15-year-old and a 16-year-old were trying to steal items from a JD Sports store on Broadway near West 42nd Street at around 7 p.m. Thursday when they were stopped by a female security guard, Chief Chell said at the news conference.Mr. Figueroa pulled out what the chief described as a “very large handgun” and fired at the security guard, striking the tourist in the process. He then ran off, firing at an officer as he went. Given the crowds in the area at the time, officers did not fire back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Live TV, Guardian Angels Tackle Man Sliwa Misidentified as Migrant

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      “We’ve got to take back 42nd Street,” Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the anti-crime group, said on “Hannity” as the Guardian Angels pushed a man to the ground.The Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa was being interviewed live from Times Square on Tuesday night by the Fox News host Sean Hannity when their exchange took a startling turn.The topic was what both men seemed to agree was a migrant-fueled wave of crime and chaos that they claimed had overtaken New York amid a surge of arrivals into the city from the southern border over the past two years.Suddenly, Mr. Sliwa had a prime-time example. As he spoke, the half-dozen red-jacketed Angels flanking him slipped out of the frame.“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and Seventh where all this is taking place,” Mr. Sliwa said, pointing off camera.“Can you pan the camera?” Mr. Hannity asked his cameraman.The cameraman swung around and captured the Angels confronting a slightly built man in a hooded sweatshirt, throwing him to the ground and putting him in a headlock.“He is out of control,” Mr. Sliwa said as the camera turned away and Mr. Hannity shifted to criticizing President Biden over his administration’s border policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More