Police from the 102nd Precinct in Richmond Hill are looking for a couple who allegedly attacked a 37-year-old man on an MTA Q53 bus in Woodhaven and remain at large more than three weeks after the bloody assault.
The victim was sitting on the bus as it approached 101st Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 7, when the two strangers began to argue with him.
The verbal dispute escalated into violence when the couple began to hit him in the head with a glass bottle multiple times, causing lacerations to his head and face, police said. An NYPD spokesman could not say what the assailants were arguing about with the victim before they assaulted him.
The couple ran off the bus and were last seen walking northbound on Woodhaven Boulevard toward Atlantic Avenue. The victim was transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition.
The NYPD released surveillance images of the suspects and described them as having medium complexions. The man has dark hair in dreadlocks and wore a blue t-shirt, light-colored shorts with multi-colored designs, dark sunglasses and white socks and blue Crocs. He held a bottle in a brown bag in his right hand and a white plastic bag with unknown contents in his right hand. The woman had long black hair and wore a blue bikini top, ripped blue jeans and white flip-flops. She held a glass bottle in a small brown bag in her left hand.
A reward of up to $3,500 is being offered for information that leads to their arrest.
Anyone with information regarding this assault investigation is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
Through July 21, the 102nd Precinct has reported 189 assaults so far in 2024, 20 fewer than the 209 reported at the same point last year, a decline of 9.6%, according to the most recent CompStat report.
