NEW YORK – Crime-fighting New York State attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy today demanded an end to the chronic lawlessness New Yorkers are experiencing on the streets and in the subways.

“Ross Falzone being pushed to his death by a mentally ill career criminal was not an isolated incident,” Komatireddy said. “New Yorkers regularly encounter repeat offenders, drug users, and mentally ill individuals on the streets and in the subways. This is not compassion. We are failing to take care of those who are sick and failing to protect innocent New Yorkers.”

“These are not statistics. They are New York students, teachers, mothers, construction workers, fishermen, and retirees. The perpetrators who killed and maimed them were not strangers to the system. They were released by it, again and again, until somebody got hurt or died,” Ms. Komatireddy said. 

She also noted that the perpetrators in nearly every one of these cases were known to the city’s mental health and criminal justice apparatus before the attacks took place. “We must remove the repeat offenders, the drug-addicted, and the mentally ill from our streets humanely. The way to do that is to get serious about enforcing the laws, providing residential treatment, and using involuntary commitment,” Ms. Komatireddy said.

Ms. Komatireddy cited a partial list of recent attacks, every one of them committed by an individual with a documented history of prior arrests, mental illness, or both:

— May 2026. Ross Falzone, 76, a retired schoolteacher, was shoved down a Chelsea subway staircase to his death. His attacker, Rhamell Burke, 32, had been arrested five times since February, was discharged from Bellevue Hospital one hour after admission, and was still wearing his Bellevue Hospital psychiatric wristband when he killed Mr. Falzone five hours after walking out of the hospital.

— April 2026. Three senior citizens, a 65-year-old man, a 70-year-old woman, and an 84-year-old man, were stabbed with a machete by Anthony Griffin, 44, at Grand Central Station on a Saturday morning. The victims sustained injuries including significant lacerations to the head and face and a skull fracture. Griffin had 13 prior arrests in New York City, including for menacing with a sharp object.

— March 2026. Richard Williams, 83, an Air Force veteran and retired pilot who had just beaten prostate cancer, died from injuries sustained when Bairon Hernandez, 34, shoved him onto the tracks at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station on March 8. Seconds earlier, Mr. Hernandez had shoved Jhon Rodriguez, 30, onto the same tracks. Mr. Rodriguez, despite his own injuries, helped lift Mr. Williams off the rails before the next train arrived. Mr. Williams spent his last days on a respirator. 

— Fall and winter 2025, multiple incidents, Syracuse. A spate of street stabbings clustered around downtown Syracuse and the Rescue Mission Shelter on Dickerson Street. Local press documented a “troubling pattern” of stabbings in the city, several involving victims and suspects connected to violence and drug use around the shelter.

— December 2025. NYU student Amelia Lewis, 20, was attacked from behind on Broadway while walking to class. Her assailant, James Rizzo, 45, was a homeless parolee with sixteen prior arrests and a documented history of mental illness, charged with two unrelated attacks on women that same week.

— October 2025. Justice Jackson, 30, an emotionally disturbed homeless man with an extensive criminal history, including more than a dozen prior arrests and ten mental health calls, stabbed a 51-year-old man in the back during an argument on a rush-hour D train.

— September 2025. Laverne Singletary, 59, a homeless man, was stabbed to death in the parking lot of a gas station at the corner of Clifford and Portland avenues in Rochester. His killer, Antonio McKnight, 32, was also homeless. 

— December 2024. Joseph Lynskey, 45, head of music programming at a New York content company, was shoved onto the tracks at the 18th Street subway station on a New Year’s Eve outing — the same station where Mr. Falzone would die sixteen months later. The attacker, Kamel Hawkins, 23, had a string of prior arrests including assault of an NYPD officer, weapons possession, and harassment.

— December 2024. Debrina Kawam, 57, was sleeping on an F train at Coney Island when Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, who was in the country illegally following a prior deportation and was living at a Brooklyn shelter, set her clothes on fire with a lighter and watched her burn from a platform bench.

— November 2024. Ramon Rivera, 51, a man with multiple prior arrests, including for burglary and assault, and a history of mental health issues, who had been hospitalized multiple times for serious mental illness and released early from Rikers, stabbed three strangers to death across Manhattan in a single morning rampage — Angel Lata Landi, 36, a construction worker; Chang Wang, 67, a fisherman; and Wilma Augustin, 36, a mother of an 8-year-old.

— September 2024. John Hughes, 44, a homeless man, pulled a wooden board studded with nails from a dumpster at the corner of Grand Street and Madison Avenue in Albany and swung it at a 32-year-old stranger walking past. The victim was hospitalized with four staples in his head and injuries to his ribs. 

— April 2024. Calvin Haskins, 34, stabbed three employees at the Buffalo Psychiatric Center using a knife he had hidden in his sock. The victims — the staff trying to rehabilitate him — were left with life-altering physical injuries. Haskins had previously been charged with stabbing a man 17 times at a Metro Rail Station in downtown Buffalo. 

— May 2023. Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy, 35, on her way to work, had her head smashed into a moving E train by Kamal Semrade, 42, a man with a history of mental health issues who was living in a Queens shelter.

— January 2022. Michelle Go, 40, a Deloitte consultant, was shoved in front of an R train at Times Square by Martial Simon, 61, a schizophrenic homeless man who had two prior violent felony convictions and a warrant out for his arrest for violating his parole. Simon attempted to push another woman onto the tracks before approaching Go. 

The list is only partial, the Komatireddy campaign noted. 

Ms. Komatireddy renewed her call for New York State to use the $3 billion windfall it received in opioid settlement funds to provide free residential treatment for every New Yorker who needs it.