Man beaten by crowd after allegedly snatching woman off Bronx subway
BRONX, New York City (WABC) -- Police have arrested a man they say tried to grab a young woman off a Bronx subway train and was subsequently assaulted on the street by people who recognized him in a video posted online.
The attempted abduction happened around 2:30 a.m. Sunday at the Morrison Avenue-Soundview Avenue station, with authorities identifying the now-charged suspect as 48-year-old Sonny Alloway.
Video posted on social media shows the suspect, wearing a bright red jacket, waiting for the doors on the 6 train to open before grabbing the woman and pulling her onto the platform. She eventually gets away and runs back onto the train, screaming and cursing.
Train passengers confront him before he walks off, and the train resumes service.
Officers responded to a 911 call at the station for the incident, but the victim had already departed before they arrived.
A second video on social media then shows Alloway, now wearing a different jacket, being repeatedly punched and kicked on a sidewalk by a group of men who seem to have recognized him from the initial video.
"My man was already telling me about the situation, like you know, you heard about homey that snatched shorty off the train and everything like that," said one man who was a part of that group. "And as we talking, homey just walks inside the store."
The men say Alloway just walked up to them and told who he was.
"He took off his sunglasses, started smiling and said, 'Y'all see me on TV?'" the man said.
That's when some bystanders attempted to detain him, while others started the assault.
"He was saying, 'I didn't do it, I didn't do it, that's not me. I didn't mean to do it, I didn't try to do it,'" another man in the group said. "He just kept making up excuses."
Police say Alloway then ran to a nearby deli, where someone inside called 911 and told police the guy from the subway video was there.
Officers responded and, based solely on the cell phone video, charged Alloway with unlawful imprisonment.
"I was just thinking about my niece or my sister or something like that, like if they was on the train and they didn't make it home because someone snatched them up, I lost it," the first man said. "I wasn't thinking about police, I was thinking about justice. Like this man got to get touched."
Police then took Alloway to St. Barnabas Hospital for treatment of various injuries.
Alloway has at least six prior arrests dating back to 1993 for assault, grand larceny auto, criminal possession of a weapon (knife), violate order of protection, criminal possession of a controlled substance, and criminal possession of a weapon (loaded firearm).
Police still need to identify the young woman in the video, and at this point, the Bronx district attorney is deferring prosecution until they can speak to her.
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