The six Uptown locations where muggings have been attributed to a serial subway robber, according to police. Graphic by Shane Snow.
Note: This post was edited 1/12/2009.
On a Saturday afternoon last May, James Hansen stepped onto the A train at 207th Street in Inwood. He never suspected he’d step off the train more than $2.25 poorer than when he’d entered. He didn’t know he’d be sharing a car with the Subway Bandit.
A man approached, six foot two inches and 190 pounds. He leveled a t-shirt-wrapped hand in the shape of a gun at Hansen’s chest. “Give me your cash or I will leave you bleeding,” the man said. He demanded a debit card and personal identification number, which Hansen gave him, according to police.
Hansen, 24, the bandit’s fourth subway victim in two months, watched his mugger flee from the 190th Street stop.
A week later, on Sunday, June 7, the Subway Bandit boarded the A train at 207th Street again, headed south. It was 3:50 p.m. A woman boarded the train, and the mugger accosted her, demanding money. She refused to comply. The mugger, who had no real weapon, punched her in the face and hopped off the train at Dyckman street with the woman’s bank card, leaving her with a black eye and cut cheek.
At that point, the Subway Bandit ditched the “gun” in favor of a knife.
The very next day he flashed it at a 22-year-old woman on a 3 train in Brooklyn, and then a week later at a 23-year old woman on the Lower East Side. He hit uptown once more on June 22, robbing a 33-year-old woman on the C train at 168th Street.
Other muggings later occurred in Bronx and Queens. “He has no fixed place of abode,” said NYPD Detective Cheryl Crispin this month.
The spree ended, at least in Manhattan, after three more robberies in August.
On Aug. 21, NYPD released a statement identifying Rasheem Williams, a 37-year-old homeless Brooklyn native, as the suspect; a week later police asked for public assistance in tracking him down. Sometime between Aug. 14 and Nov. 8, Williams fled the city.
Rasheem Williams, 37, is suspected by police in 14 subway robberies, but has only been indicated in 2. Photo courtesy of NYPD.
Once he crossed the New York State line, he became a federal fugitive, and the US Marshals stepped in to handle the case. They tracked Williams 400 miles south to Rocky Mount, N.C.
“They had information from a confidential source that he was down here,” said Rocky Mount Police Sergeant Silvio Jacob.
Sergeant Jacob said the Marshals suspected that Williams, his brother, Jamal, and a man named Michael Lewis were hiding in a house on Sunset Avenue. The Marshals enlisted the Rocky Mount force’s Street Engagement Team to hunt down all three.
On Nov. 8, police spotted a vehicle that they believed Williams might be in, “coming into the downtown section of Rocky Mount,” said Jacob. Officers stopped the vehicle; Williams was in the back seat.
Police then proceeded to the house on Sunset and arrested the other two men.
“We don’t have any charges on him here in Rocky Mount,” said Jacob. “I guess he was wanted in New York for some robberies.” Marshals transported Williams back to NYC, where he was arraigned.
Six months after mugging Hansen – to the day – the man Hansen identified from a photographic police lineup, was in Manhattan Criminal Court. Rasheem Williams, the alleged Subway Bandit who’d climbed to the top of NYPD’s Most Wanted list, police said, was being charged with two counts of Robbery in the First Degree.
“He pled not guilty,” Jeanne Emhoff, Williams’ attorney said after a preliminary hearing Nov. 12. He was ordered to return to court Nov. 30 after a fuller investigation, Emhoff said. After that hearing, the judge ordered Williams to return for a grand jury hearing.
Police suspect Williams of at least 14 robberies; a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s office refused to say why he’d only been charged for two. Six of the muggings occurred on trains uptown.
The FBI reported in 2008 that robberies, defined as theft with threat of violence (including muggings and convenience store holdups), are down about 37 percent in the last decade. 2009 data has not been released yet, and it’s unclear what effect current economic conditions have had on muggings this year.
According to Detective Thomas Smith of the NYPD Robbery Squad, Williams admitted to robbing a woman on the V train in 2008.
Williams trip to jail won’t be his first, should he be convicted, police said.
He has “has a prior arrest 11/29/04 for Criminal possession of Marijuana,” said Crispin. He was also arrested in June 2005, but Crispin said the arrest is sealed.
His next court appearance, for the grand jury hearing, is scheduled for Jan. 4.
Sigh. I wish that I had seen this article earlier. Daylight did not stream through the windows as the A train headed south from 207th Street on June 7. Trust me. I know. I was there. But, even if I had not been, I could tell you that there was no streaming of daylight. Because the A train is a subway. It runs underground all the way through Manhattan, and the sun does shine underground.
And the “subway bandit” did not “get himself a knife” after the June 7th incident. He already had a knife and had used it in at least two of the six robberies that he perpetrated prior to June 7th. This information was reported in several news sources, and was included on at least some of the wanted posters that were posted throughout the transit system. I know that because, as I lay in the hospital with a fractured eye socket, the police showed me a poster with a sketch and a description of a mugging at knife point on the 1 train in the Bronx in April 2009. But the important point is that, assuming all these robberies were perpetrated by the same man, there was nothing about the June 7th incident that inspired him to procure a knife. He had already committed more than one robbery at knife-point.
Sorry. I can’t help it. He was not charged with two robberies. He has only been charged in connection with one robbery. He was charged with two counts of robbery in connection with one incident on May 30, 2009, apparently the incident during which James Hansen was robbed. This information is readily available on the public docket for the criminal courts accessible through the website for the New York State court system. I think it’s likely that he will be charged with additional robbery charges shortly. Check the public docket tomorrow.
Why two charges for one robbery? It’s actually common for a criminal defendant to be indicted on multiple charges stemming from one incident. In this case, the suspect has been charged with one count of robbery involving the display of a firearm and one count of robbery involving the use or threatened use of a dangerous instrument. The latter is the “top count” which makes a lot of sense because the DA is more likely to get a conviction on that count.. You can be guilty of robbery involving the threatened use of a dangerous instrument (e.g., a gun) without actually having a dangerous instrument. According to James’ account of the incident, the robber threatened him with a pretend gun. That’s enough for a conviction on the top count if proven to the satisfaction of the jury. Technically, you don’t need to have a gun to be found guilty of first degree robbery involving display of a firearm if it appears that the perpetrator has a gun, but it’s an affirmative defense if it can be shown that there wasn’t really a gun. So if a jury finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the suspect didn’t have a gun but really only had his hand wrapped up in a t-shirt, the charge gets reduced to second-degree which means less jail time.
And everyone knows he didn’t have a gun. It was pretty darned obvious that he had a fist balled up in a sweatshirt/t-shirt. In fact, in other circumstances, it would have been comical.
And why has he so far only been charged with one robbery? The logical answer is that, at the time of the indictment on charges related to the May 30 incident, the DA’s office felt it had insufficient evidence to charge him with any of the other robberies. That, I think, would be the purpose of the “fuller investigation”– to gather such evidence. You state that Mr. Hansen identified the suspect from a photographic line-up. Did any one of the other 13 victims make the same identification? I know that I did not, and I, too, was shown a photographic line-up. And I got a really good look at him. From many different angles.
The “fuller investigation” would involve, in part, physical line-ups, which I am betting resulted in more positive identifications than the photo array. Since the guy’s face has been all over TV, the newspapers, and the internet with the caption “subway bandit.” Right?
I should probably retract much of what I said about the criminal charges against the suspect. Although I have a legal background, I am not a criminal lawyer, and I have only a passing familiarity with the NY criminal code. I do not really know enough to be sounding off about what is necessary to obtain a conviction on the top charge or why that charge is the top charge,etc. Though I am sure about the affirmative defense part.
However, the point is that these two charges both stem from a single robbery, the one that occurred on May 30. Not two different robberies.
I apologize. I was thinking 1 Train not A Train, since a number of the events occurred on the 1, which is above ground at several spots. You’re right, unprofessional mistake on my part, and we have corrected the story.
“Got himself a knife” was not meant to indicate that the mugger never operated a knife before. He had, reportedly, used the gun-hand for the past few muggings and not a knife. However, to avoid confusion, we’ve corrected that as well.
And I believe that he has only been arraigned. Not indicted as indicated in the caption of the suspect’s photo. If there is a grand jury in this case, as indicated in the article, then the grand jury will issue the indictment when it is done considering the evidence. Unless an indictment has already been handed down by a grand jury on the charges related to the May 30 incident, but the public criminal docket does not seem to indicate that.
In-person line-ups were conducted on January 11. If you look on the public criminal docket now, you will see that he was indicted on January 12. However, I do not seen any indication as to which robberies he has been charged with or what counts he has been indicted on with respect to each.
The document the court gave us indicated he is being charged in both the incident with Mr. Hansen and another one on the Lower East Side in which he was identified by the victim.
Thank you for your comments on the progress of the case. The information we posted was accurate according to the police and city sources that gave it to us.
Thank you for clarifying that the suspect was indeed charged with a second robbery and identifying which robbery that was. That is important information, and I wish that it had been included in the original article.