Subway survivor Joseph Lynskey speaks with ABC News. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A man who was pushed onto New York City subway tracks in the path of an oncoming train is recounting the harrowing, near-death experience that left him with a fractured skull, four broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.
“I just thought, ‘I’ve been pushed and I’m going to die,'” Joe Lynskey, 45, told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” in a broadcast exclusive interview.
Lynskey had just finished a New Year’s Eve brunch with his friends when a stranger pushed him onto the tracks at the 18th Street station in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.
“It happened in a flash,” he said.
“The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air, and I saw the two lights of the train in my face and I could make out the shape of the conductor,” Lynskey said. “And then I crashed into the tracks and I smacked my head open on the ground.”
Lynskey survived the initial push, but he knew he was still in life-threatening danger due to the subway system’s electrified rail, known as the third rail.
“If you touch it at all, you will die immediately,” he said. “You cannot move. Don’t kick your feet, don’t struggle.”
Lynskey said he started screaming for help, and about 90 seconds in a woman responded to him and tried to keep him calm.
After about four minutes, Lynskey said he heard the sirens from rescuers rushing to the scene.
“They dragged me a few feet to the opening between the two subway cars and they told me to raise my hands above my head,” he said. “Two firefighters on the platform pulled me up onto the platform — and I heard my ribs crack. It was unbelievably painful.”
Lynskey spent seven days in the hospital, including five days in intensive care, as he recovered from his fractured skull, broken ribs and ruptured spleen.
The 23-year-old suspected of pushing Lynskey, Kamel Hawkins, fled the scene and was apprehended later that day. He was indicted on charges including attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty.
Asked what he would say to Hawkins, Lynskey replied, “I’m choosing not to focus on the anger or resentment or negativity.”
“I’m focusing on healing, recovering, getting myself back to my life,” he said.
Lynskey said that his experience is “a powerful reminder that this can all be taken away from you at any moment, and you have to keep going. Life is too short.”
Hawkins is next due in court on April 16.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called the attack “a brutal and unprovoked act of violence.”
“Every day, we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to hold accountable those who threaten the safety of New Yorkers utilizing our transit system,” Bragg said in a statement.
Police investigate a mass shooting that erupted on June 2, 2024, that left one man dead and 28 people injured at a large street party in Akron, Ohio. (ABC News/WEWS)
(NEW YORK) — Homicides across the United States are poised to plummet for the third straight year as 2024 winds down, driving the nation’s annual murder toll down to levels not seen since before the pandemic, according to preliminary data from cities both large and small.
Based on available crime statistics from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a nearly 16% drop in homicides nationwide and a 3.3% decline in overall violent crime, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News.
The dramatic drop in homicides surpasses a 13% decline in 2023, then the largest decrease on record until now. In 2022, the number of murders across the country fell 6%, according to the FBI.
The three consecutive years of declining homicides come in the wake of 30% jump in murders between 2019 and 2020, the largest single-year increase in more than a century.
“Considering where we were just three or four years ago, we’re basically looking at 5,000 fewer murder victims than in 2020, 2021 and 2022 having occurred in 2024,” said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and the New Orleans Police Department.
In contrast, a dozen major U.S. cities broke annual homicide records in 2021.
Philadelphia — which recorded an all-time high of 562 homicides in 2021, 516 in 2022 and 410 last year — has seen a 40% drop in homicides in 2024.
Other major cities seeing precipitous reductions in homicides this year are New Orleans, down 38%; Washington, D.C., down 29%; Memphis, Tennessee, down 23%; Baltimore, down 24%; Kansas City, Missouri, down 20%; and Los Angeles, down 15%.
New York City, the nation’s largest city, had recorded 357 homicides through Dec. 15, a 7.3% drop from 2023, according to New York Police Department crime statistics. The city — which tallied 442 murders in 2020, a 45% jump from 2019 — has seen homicides fall 15% over the past two years.
Chicago has recorded a 7% decline in homicides as of Dec. 15, down from 603 murders at this time last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s crime data. Over the past three years, homicides in Chicago have fallen 29% after skyrocketing 55% between 2019 and 2020 to 769 murders.
Homicides this year in 63 cities with populations of more than 250,000 declined by at least 15% and murders were down at least 19% in 246 cities with populations under 250,000, Asher’s research found.
“It’s a tremendous achievement in terms of how far murder has fallen in just really two straight years,” Asher said.
Property crime plummets
In addition to violent crime falling, property crime is also poised to finish the year down 8.6% nationwide, mostly due to a 21.4% decrease in motor vehicle theft, Asher said.
“Auto thefts went up 12% last year. They’re coming down more than 20% this year,” said Asher, who added that the 2023 spike in car thefts appears to be tied to social media instruction videos on how to steal certain models of Kias and Hyundais.
Crunching the numbers
Since 2016, Asher has crunched the numbers for an end-of-the-year report on crime trends. This year, his report is based on preliminary crime statistics from 309 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the most data he has ever received.
Asher’s analysis aligns closely with data released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing murders down 14%. The Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks all shootings across the nation, shows homicides are down around 11%.
“We kind of put all those together and we see a very large decline in murder, a very large decline in gun violence happening in the U.S. in 2024 on top of what was a very large decline in murder and a very large decline in gun violence in 2023,” Asher said.
Referring to overall violent crime, Asher said, “You’re probably looking at, if not the lowest violent crime rate since 1970, certainly at or around where we were pre-pandemic.”
Besides homicide, rape was down 4.5% from 2023, robberies fell 1.1% and aggravated assaults declined 3.7%, according to Asher.
The falling numbers come amid a backdrop of high-profile violent crimes in 2024, including more than 400 mass shootings, two assassination attempts on President-elect Donald Trump and the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson allegedly by 26-year-old Ivy League graduate Luigi Mangione, who police suspect was out to strike fear in the insurance industry.
The numbers also come just days after a 15-year-old girl allegedly carried out a shooting rampage at her Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, killing a teacher and a classmate, and injured six other students before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
The Wisconsin shooting came three months after a 14-year-old boy allegedly killed two students and two teachers, and injured nine others at his high school in Winder, Georgia, with an AR-style weapon police alleged his father gave him as a Chrismas present.
‘We have turned the tide against violent crime’
During a Dec. 10 briefing of the Justice Department’s Violence Crime Reduction Steering Committee meeting, Attorney General Merrick Garland said preliminary crime data showed significant declines in violent crime in 85 cities in 2024, including a 17.5% drop in homicides nationwide.
“Over the past two years, we have turned the tide against the violent crime that spiked during the pandemic,” Garland said.
He said the numbers build on the historic drop in homicides nationwide last year, which he said was the lowest level of violent crime in 50 years.
Merrick attributed the tumbling violent crime rate partly to the DOJ’s Violent Crime Reduction Roadmap, a one-stop-shop created to assist local jurisdictions in developing, implementing and evaluating the strategies to prevent, intervene and respond to acts of community gun violence.
President Joe Biden’s administration has also sought to curb gun violence in recent years through executive actions and signing into law in 2022 the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, allocated $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws” to remove firearms from people deemed dangerous to themselves and others.
Biden also established the in 2023 the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to focus on ways to assist states and cities reduce the nation’s epidemic of gun violence.
Some cities such as Philadelphia have credited the work of violence interrupter programs, community-based initiatives that use peacebuilding methods to head off incidents of violence before they occur.
In Philadelphia, city leaders also pointed to a $184 million investment in gun violence initiatives in 2022, including one that attempts to identify people who are at risk of being involved in violence to provide them with mental health services or job placement. While the city also boosted the Philadelphia Police Department’s budget that year by $30 million, it instituted a violence prevention plan that emphasizes a combination of law enforcement strategies, environmental improvements and youth programs to reduce its homicide numbers.
“We need to continue pressing forward with our comprehensive approach, which is prevention, intervention and enforcement,” Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said at a Nov. 1 news conference on the city’s falling homicide numbers.
In October, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed six bills to strengthen New York’s gun laws, including one requiring gun sellers to post tobacco-style safety warnings and another that cracks down on illegal devices called “switches” that convert semiautomatic handguns into automatic weapons.
Asher said that in 2020 and 2021 when violent crime rose to alarming levels, programs such as community violence interruptors didn’t exist and the budgets of many police departments were getting slashed in the defund-the-police movement stemming from nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Asher said states and local governments, as well as philanthropies, are pumping money into programs to bring down violent crime.
“Some of that is undoubtedly contributing to what we’re seeing now,” Asher said. “I’m not naïve enough to suggest that that’s the entire explanation. There are undoubtedly a multitude of factors that help to explain this complex problem.”
ABC News’ Calvin Milliner contributed to this report.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Top white shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell will represent President Donald Trump as he appeals his criminal hush money conviction in New York, according to court filings Wednesday.
The new attorneys filed a notice of appeal Wednesday, signaling their intention to appeal Trump’s conviction to New York’s Appellate Division, First Department.
Among Trump’s new lawyers is firm co-chair Robert J. Giuffra.
“President Donald J. Trump’s appeal is important for the rule of law, New York’s reputation as a global business, financial and legal center, as well as for the presidency and all public officials,” Giuffra said in a statement. “The misuse of the criminal law by the Manhattan DA to target President Trump sets a dangerous precedent, and we look forward to the case being dismissed on appeal.”
The change in attorneys followed Trump’s naming of his former lead attorneys, Todd Blanche, Emil Bove and John Sauer, to top roles in the Justice Department.
Blanche has been nominated for deputy attorney general, Sauer as solicitor general, and Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general.
Sauer led Trump’s successful appeals, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, that led to the dismissals of federal prosecutions in Trump’s Jan. 6 and classified documents cases.
Blanche and Bove led the defense team at Trump’s criminal trial in New York that ended in Trump’s conviction last May on all 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, sentenced Trump prior to his inauguration to an unconditional discharge, sparing Trump any prison time, fines or probation.
Luigi Mangione is seen inside the police station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Dec. 9, 2024/Obtained by ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione has been indicted in New York for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the grand jury has upgraded charges to first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Mangione, 26, is also charged with: two counts of second-degree murder, one of which is charged as killing as an act of terrorism; two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree; four counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree; one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; and one count of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree.
The slaying in the heart of Midtown Manhattan was “intended to evoke terror,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference.
Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson outside a hotel on Dec. 4 as the CEO headed to an investors conference.
“This type of premeditated, targeted gun violence cannot and will not be tolerated,” Bragg said in a statement Tuesday.
In Pennsylvania, where Mangione remains in custody, he faces charges including allegedly possessing an untraceable ghost gun.
He is expected to waive extradition from Pennsylvania during his next court appearance on Thursday, sources said.
Mangione has hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo as his lawyer in New York. She was a 25-year veteran of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and its second in command for eight years.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9 after nearly one week on the run.
When Mangione was apprehended, he had a 9 mm handgun with a 3D-printed receiver, a homemade silencer, two ammunition magazines and live cartridges, prosecutors said.
Thompson’s murder ignited online anger at the health insurance industry. Many people online have celebrated the suspect and some have donated to a defense fund for Mangione.
“There is no heroism in what Mangione did. This was a senseless act of violence,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at Tuesday’s news conference.
“Any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice,” she said.
“Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing,” President-elect Donald Trump said at a news conference Monday.
“It’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him,” Trump said.
“It seems that there’s a certain appetite for him. I don’t get it,” Trump added.
Sources said writings police seized from Mangione suggest he was fixated on UnitedHealthcare for months and gradually developed a plan to kill the CEO.
Among the writings recovered from Mangione was a passage that allegedly said, “What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” according to law enforcement officials.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
