A very disturbing incident that occurred on the streets of Manhattan in New York City, involving a group of young cyclists punching and kicking a BMW X5, was caught on camera making the news nationwide.
In the video, we see the cyclists surrounding the BMW, driven by Max Torgovnick, on Tuesday just after 4 p.m. at the intersection of East 21st Street and Fifth Avenue. They are seen punching the windows and body-slamming the hood. One member of the group jumped on the bonnet and kicked the windshield until it cracked.
Across the country, violent crimes have skyrocketed, including in places like New York, largely because poverty rates have skyrocketed.
Now, 36-year-old Max had come forward to share his experience while driving his mom through Manhattan when the group of teens descended upon his vehicle.
Max claims that the kicks were strong enough for fragments of glass to hit him and his mother, who was also inside the car.
The altercation in the video allegedly followed an incident that we so far have been unable to find the video of in which the BMW slowed, resulting in a cyclist crashing into the back of it.
According to Max, who spoke to the New York Daily News, one of the cyclists grabbed onto his car to use it to pull themselves along. Max says he slowed, with the intention of letting the cyclists by, but heard a thud from behind.
The thud was a cyclist who, according to a witness who filmed the event, suffered a bloody lip as a result of the incident.
Max says he then stopped and was about to open the door to see what had happened when the cyclists started surrounding the car. He closed the door and decided to stay in the car.
“And I noticed this swarm of cyclists, tall, young kids just weaving in and out of traffic and kind of surrounding the car,” the driver told ABC7 New York. “We got to the point where they were in front of me and they were on either side of me and behind me, and I’m probably going like seven or eight miles an hour.”
Max is a New York native. He spent his whole life in the city and was shocked that such violence would occur on the streets of his home city.
“I started to open up the driver door but I was immediately surrounded on every side by these kids that have just gotten off their bikes and they started screaming, yelling, punching the car, hitting the hood of the car, just yelling, ‘get out, get out, open the roll down the window, roll down the window.’ When I didn’t, they started to take out their aggression on the car itself,” Max told the news station.
“But it was only once they started smashing the windshields as soon as the windshield broke, and the glass hit our faces and landed in our laps and I realized, like the ceiling is collapsing,” the 36-year old driver continued. “And if they jump on it one more time they’re going to gain access to the car.”
Max recalled that his mother, who was in her 70s, was frantically dialing 911 while screaming, “We’re going to die, they’re going to kill us.” Another witness claimed that Max Torgovnick’s mom was “shaking and in tears” following the random attack by a group of teenagers.
From AWM:
Violent crime has been on the rise across the United States largely due to the economic fallout in response to the coronavirus pandemic. However, NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea believes that a change to New York’s bail laws also contributed to the rise in violence.
“Until we come to that realization as a society — is this what we want?” Shea said. “It’s good to have philosophical discussions about ‘end mass incarceration’ and ‘end incarceration,’ but you don’t want to do it by turning the innocent public into jails in their own apartments and houses.”
Watch the video report below for more details:
Sources: AWM, ABC7 New York, New York Daily News
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