NYC subway shover was free on assault case thanks to bail reform
By Rebecca Rosenberg, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Tina Moore and Bruce Golding
New York Post
October 6, 2021
A mentally ill woman busted in an unprovoked attempted murder at the Times Square subway station was locked up on $100,000 bail Wednesday — as a group of soft-on-crime politicians demanded that prosecutors completely stop seeking bail to ease conditions at Rikers Island.
Accused subway shover Anthonia Egegbara was free to allegedly terrorize morning rush-hour straphangers on Monday after getting released without bail in a July 5 assault in Harlem that left the victim with injuries that included a black eye, broken nose and a knocked-out tooth.
Egegbara, 29, is charged in that case with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor that’s among the many crimes for which judges can no longer impose bail under a controversial 2020 reform law that a handful of politicians would like to see broadened.
Egegbara, who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia, has a history of assault arrests and complaints about being an emotionally disturbed person that date to 2010, law-enforcement sources said.
One of those calls came just two days after the Harlem assault, when she began arguing with staffers at a homeless shelter in Far Rockaway, Queens, sources said.
That incident led to a psychiatric evaluation, as did another in July 2020 when cops found her throwing items out of an apartment window in The Bronx and screaming at passersby, sources said.
Egegbara is charged with attempted second-degree murder for allegedly pushing Lenny Javier, 42, against the side of a No. 3 train as it barreled into the busy Times Square station shortly after 8 a.m. Monday.
Terrifying surveillance video allegedly shows Egegbara leap from a bench as the train approached — with Javier narrowly avoiding getting crushed under its wheels.
The impact with the moving front car knocked Javier back onto the platform with such force that one of her shoes flew off. She suffered injuries that include a broken nose and fractured chin.
Kathryn Wylde of the pro-business Partnership for New York City said the alarming incident “confirms the concerns of office workers who are no longer afraid of COVID, but are afraid of being attacked or harassed around the Times Square, Herald Square, Penn Station areas.”
“I’m hearing from office employers in the Central Business District who say this has become the key issue for why people don’t want to return,” she added.
Egegbara “has been in and out of an institution for most of her life,” her older sister, Dedria Gregg, 39, told The Post.
“The city has failed her. They took her off the medication because she says that she doesn’t have mental issues, which is clearly not the truth,” Gregg said.
“They always let her go and she always attacks somebody,” she said. “If they knew any better, she’d be sent out to the institution tonight, instead of putting her on Rikers Island where she could fight again.”
City officials declined to comment, citing privacy laws.
Meanwhile, city Councilman Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for comptroller, and 13 state legislators were among those who called on all five of the city’s district attorneys “to immediately stop requesting bail in all cases.”
They said the move would “ensure that not a single additional person is held in the inhumane conditions at Rikers,” which has been marked by chaos and violence recently amid what the correction officers’ union has described as a dangerous staffing shortage.
“Every time your ADAs request bail be set, particularly when they know that bail is unaffordable, they demonstrate a callous disregard for human life and make clear that you are willing to subject presumptively innocent people to torture,” the letter said.
“Jail is not supposed to be a death sentence. You must act now.”
The Manhattan DA’s Office said it recently agreed to release 24 inmates
pending trial and resolved or dismissed cases that let eight others go
free.
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