NYC man, 28, killed after ‘jumping turnstile at Queens station and cracking head on floor 

A suspected fare evader died Saturday morning after jumping over a New York City subway turnstile in Queens, tripping and cracking his head on the concrete floor, cops said.

The 28-year-old man, who has yet to be identified, was attempting to hitch a subway ride without paying the $2.75 fare when he jumped over the turnstiles at the Forest Hills-71st Avenue train station.

The incident happened around 6.45am in the station, which serves the E, F, M and R lines, according to the New York Post.

Cops and EMS personnel responded to a call of a man lying unconscious on the mezzanine floor. 

The 28-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene and it is believed that he died when his head struck the floor. However, a cause of death has not been released as of Sunday afternoon. 

The man, who has yet to be identified, was attempting to hitch a subway ride without paying the $2.75 fare when he jumped over the turnstiles, ultimately leading to his death (file photo)

The freak accident comes in the first days of 2022 after a year of violence in the Big Apple. However, nothing seems to be changing in the new year, although newly-inaugurated Mayor Eric Adams has vowed to take a tougher stance on crime than his predecessor Bill de Blasio. 

On Tuesday, a shocking video captured the moment an 85-year-old woman was slammed into a wall inside a Bronx apartment building after a cold-hearted thief dragged her out of an elevator by her cane and rifled through her purse.

The NYPD shared surveillance video on Monday of the robbery at the building on E 149th St and Morris Ave in Mott Haven at 3.10pm as the city’s spiraling crime keeps sinking to new depths.

The callous thief, who was wearing a surgical mask and hoodie to hide his identity, walked into the elevator of the complex’s first floor and rode with the elderly woman up to the sixth floor.

The callous thief, who was wearing a surgical mask and hoodie to hide his identity, walked into the elevator of the complex’s first floor and rode with the 85-year-old woman up to the sixth floor. He then got out when the doors opened, appeared to look down the floor’s hall to make sure no residents were out of their apartments and then went back inside the elevator to steal the woman’s purse

He then got out when the doors opened, appeared to look down the floor’s hall to make sure no residents were out of their apartments and then went back inside the elevator to steal the elderly woman’s purse.

The unidentified elderly woman was taken to Lincoln Hospital with neck pain, police said.

Later in the day, the thief was seen entering the elevator again with a stack of cash in his hand, believed to be from the purse. The amount of money he stole is unclear.

The attack came on the same day as four violent incidents were reported in various locations throughout the crime-ridden subway system, including one where a man was pushed on the tracks but managed to climb to safety.

Above ground, a woman in her 40s became the first homicide of 2022.

The woman, who has not been identified, was found lying on the sidewalk in Astoria, Queens, just before 9pm on Saturday. 

She had been stabbed multiple times near Bel Aire Diner in Astoria and later died at Astoria General Hospital.

No witnesses or suspects have been identified in the killing.

Crime will a major focus of NYC’s new mayor Eric Adams, whose first day on the job was Saturday.

Adams, 61, a former New York City police captain, began his first day on the job by riding the subway from his Brooklyn brownstone to City Hall.

A woman was found stabbed to death near a diner in Queens on New Year’s Day, making it the first known murder of 2022

Crime scene tape was seen spread across are where the woman’s body was found 

He chatted with New Yorkers with a throng of reporters following him and while waiting for the train, he called 911 to report a fight after witnessing two men tussling near the subway station.

Later in the day, he promised to aggressively go after violent crime while holding a news conference about a police officer who was shot and injured hours earlier.

Adams and his new police commissioner, Keechant Sewel, held the conference Saturday afternoon outside a hospital after a police officer was shot while sleeping in his vehicle in a precinct parking lot between shifts. The officer is expected to fully recover.

Adams declared that New York is ‘not going to be a city of violence’.

‘I am clear on my mission to aggressively go after those who are carrying violent weapons in our city,’ he said.  

Hours earlier, as confetti continued to drift across Times Square, Adams recited his oath of office. 

Associate Justice Sylvia O Hinds-Radix of the state Supreme Court’s appellate division swore Adams in as he placed one hand on a family Bible and his other held a photograph of his mother, Dorothy, who died in 2020.

After canceling initial plans to be sworn into office at a Brooklyn theater, Adams said Saturday that he chose to hold his inauguration ceremony at the scene of the New Year’s Eve ball drop to show that the city was open and alive and ‘that New York can and should be the center of the universe again’.

The pandemic had put the city through ‘two years of continuous crisis,’ Adams said, ‘and that insults our very nature as New Yorkers’.

‘There’s one thing that everyone knows about New Yorkers: We don´t like anyone telling us what to do,’ he added.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams hugs commuter Pauline Munemya as he rode the subway to City Hall on his first day in office in New York on Saturday

Adams called the police to report an assault in progress while waiting for the subway to City Hall in New York

The city’s municipal workforce is required to be vaccinated, as is anyone trying to dine indoors, see a show, work out at a gym or attend a conference. But New York City has also newly required employees in the private sector to get their shots – the most sweeping mandate of any state or big city and a policy Adams said he will preserve.

Even without a mandated shutdown, the city is grappling with de facto closures because of widespread Covid-19 infections.

Several subway lines were suspended because positive test results among transit workers left too few staffers to run regular trains. Some entertainment performances have been canceled, and restaurants and bars are crunched as workers test positive.

Adams said he and advisers are studying whether to expand vaccine mandates and noted that they plan to distribute face masks and rapid tests, as well as introduce a color-coded system alerting New Yorkers to the current threat level.

While promising to be a man of action in the mayor’s office, Adams is at times an unconventional politician who is expected to put his own stamp on the role.

Adams, the former Brooklyn borough president, has struck a more business-friendly, moderate stance than his predecessor but describes himself as a practical and progressive mayor who will ‘get stuff done’.

He is the city’s second black mayor, after David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993, and the 110th mayor of New York City.

He held his first cabinet meeting Saturday morning. Later in the afternoon, he sought to send a powerful symbol of his own resiliency by visiting a police precinct in Queens where he was beaten by officers when he was a teenager.

‘Today is an important moment for me as I finally leave the demon right here on these streets, no longer living the trauma I experienced in this precinct, but back as the mayor in charge of the entire police department,’ he said.

Murders have gone up in New York City each of the last three years, with numbers hitting a 10-year high in 2021