Two men slashed each other as an early-morning clash turned vicious on the subway platform at Grand Central Tuesday, the latest in a rash of violence in and near the trains, police said.
The men, ages 30 and 50, got into a fight on the northbound 4, 5 and 6 train platform at 42nd Street-Grand Central minutes before 1 a.m., authorities said.
They knifed each other on the arms, with one treated on scene by emergency responders and the other taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was described as conscious and alert, police said.
An MTA canine at the scene where a man was taken into custody.Robert Mecea
The nature of the dispute was not immediately clear, and it was also unclear whether the two men knew each other.
Both men were taken into custody but not charged right away, sources said.
The older man has several prior arrests, including busts for robbery and rape, according to the sources.
The younger man has no criminal history, the sources said.
The double-slashing comes during a violent stretch for the city’s subway system, with two other recent attacks reported in Grand Central Terminal alone.
Metro-North rider Malik Little, 46, was charged with attempted murder Saturday for allegedly stabbing another man who complained about the loud music he was playing, MTA Police said.
And on Christmas Eve, Jason Sargeant, 28, allegedly stabbed a 26-year-old woman in the throat and slashed a 42-year-old man in the wrist in separate attacks during a violent spree in the major transit hub.
New York City ended 2024 with a series of horrific subway incidents linked by a hidden thread: the state’schoice to legalize marijuana.
Just days before Christmas, Debrina Kawam, a troubled New Jersey woman, was set on fire on an F train and burned to death, allegedly by Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.
Zapeta-Calil was deported from the United States in 2018 but returned and was living in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. According to a shelter roommate, Zapeta-Calil was generally a normal, pleasant person who spoke with “good manners and respect” — unless he was drunk or high on K2, a synthetic cannabinoid.
He was said to have a habit of chain-smoking K2, spending $30 daily on the illegal drug.
K2 became a scourge in New York City about a decade ago. This unregulated substance — composed of plant material sprayed with hallucinogenic chemicals — was associated with erratic, sometimes violent behavior, in some cases reducing users to a “zombie-like” state. A notorious 2018 incident saw 56 people hospitalized after smoking a bad batch.
New York cracked down on K2 by making the production of synthetic cannabinoids illegal in 2012 and banning their sale entirely in 2015. The city’s health department launched an ad campaign warning users: “K2: 0% Marijuana; 100% Dangerous.”
The message was clear: Don’t mistake K2 for a harmless substance like marijuana.
But this unusual public health crusade may have inadvertently contributed to the decriminalization of marijuana in 2019, as researchers declared that “more permissive cannabis law” had the “unintended benefit” of reducing use of dangerous K2.
Marijuana advocates have touted such studies to press for decriminalization or outright legalization of marijuana — with great success.
However, K2 has persistent appeal.
The 2022 murder of Christina Yuna Lee in her Chinatown apartment shocked New Yorkers with its brutality. Her 25-year-old killer, Assamad Nash, when arrested a few days prior for another offense, was found with K2 in his pocket.
“Can I get my K2 back?” he reportedly asked the arresting officer. “I love K2.”
Jordan Neely, the homeless and mentally ill man whose May 2023 outburst on the subway led to his incapacitation and death, was high on K2 at the time, which defense pathologists testified contributed to his demise.
Additionally, the legalization of marijuana in New York may have increased K2’s availability.
Following pot decriminalization, thousands of “smoke shops” sprang up throughout the city, sometimes several on a block, selling drug paraphernalia, unlicensed marijuana, and little bags of K2, labeled as “potpourri” or “incense.”
The courts have thwarted police efforts to quickly close and padlock these illegal stores, ruling that doing so without a warrant or means of appeal is unconstitutional.
In practice, this allows the stores to keep selling illegal products — both unlicensed pot and synthetic drugs — under the counter.
It’s also unclear whether “100% marijuana,” without any K2, is entirely benign.
Marijuana has been linked to the early onset of schizophrenia in young people and is widely recognized for intensifying serious mental illness in those already affected.
Advocates often claim that pot has a calming effect on users, but overlook the fact that this mellowing typically gives way to irritability, crankiness and anger as the drug’s effects wear off.
Traffic fatalities in New York have risen sharply since marijuana was legalized. Pot advocates dispute this trend, but data from Canada reveal a surge in cannabis-related car crashes in the period immediately following national legalization.
Marijuana legalization in New York has coincided with a rise in overdose deaths from stronger drugs. In 2019, the city saw 20.7 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents; by 2023, that number had more than doubled, to 44 per 100,000 — an increase that far outpaces the national rise during the same period.
The data suggest that marijuana legalization may condition people to view the use of harder drugs as more acceptable and “safer.” In this sense, pot may act as a societal “gateway drug.”
On the last day of 2024, horrified New Yorkers witnessed video of a man getting shoved directly into the path of a speeding 1 train in the tony Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The alleged culprit, Kamel Hawkins, was arrested and charged with attempted murder.
His father, who lives with him, told reporters that his son’s frequent pot smoking had affected his personality.
“We think somebody put something in his weed,” Hawkins’ father said. “About three weeks ago he was all right and then he started acting weird. We wanted to get him help but he refused.”
Maybe someone did put something in his weed — or maybe his weed was just weed.
Linking any specific crime to the use of legal marijuana or illegal synthetic cannabinoids is hard enough, much less correlating legalization to broader crime trends.
But there certainly seem to be enough pot-related incidents occurring on the streets and in the subways of New York to raise the question of whether our laissez-faire experiment with drug use is working.
January 20 will see the conclusion of the most extraordinary episode in the history of the American presidency. For the last four years, the supposed president, Joe Biden, has been the man who wasn’t there.
Americans must hold the White House responsible for covering up President Biden’s mental decline, according to Post columnist Martin Gurri.Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Bloody and historic events — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’ pogrom in Israel and the subsequent five-cornered Israel-Iran war — have shaken the world, yet Biden wasn’t there.
Millions of non-Americans of every description, including terrorists, criminals, and members of the Cuban Communist Party, have swarmed over the Mexican border and flooded into our urban centers, costing billions of taxpayer dollars to support — and still Biden wasn’t there.
And speaking of money: Trillions were spent by a ramshackle administration that built nothing and achieved nothing, but did manage to trigger an inflationary spike, making food, cars and housing less affordable to ordinary Americans — though Biden wasn’t there for this, either.
The New York Post cover on July 12, 2024, about Biden’s mental state.
The president of the United States is supposed to preside — I mean, it’s in the title.
Biden didn’t because he couldn’t.
From the start of this term, we are now told, old age had grievously enfeebled his body and dimmed his mind — and the latter, let’s recall, never burned with particular brilliance.
The controllers who manage Biden worked hard to keep him away from his job. He spent 40% of his time in office on vacation, much of it slurping ice cream cones on the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach.
Only seven cabinet meetings were held during his term — that’s 1.75 meetings per year, in case you’re counting. Did these people know each other’s names?
One can imagine that, rather than the coordination of policy, meetings were taken up with trying to figure out who the chirpy gay guy was, sitting two chairs away from you at the big table.
This was a cabinet that wasn’t there.
The predictable consequence was an absolute policy vacuum. The US government ran on slogans: “arsenal of democracy” meant Ukraine, “immediate cease-fire” meant Israel, “equity” meant racialism, etc.
And once the slogans were uttered, we were stuck with them forever. It’s been impossible for a brain-dead government to learn from failure — for example, in our dealings with Russia and the Middle East.
Even when Biden was having one of his presumed good days and he was allowed out in public, he was liable to blurt out weird and shocking statements.
Biden’s staff reportedly had to reschedule meetings for the president because he was having “bad days.”Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
He said regime change in Russia was a necessity. He said the US would go to war with China if it invaded Taiwan. He said many things that contradicted past American positions and had never been part of his administration’s baggage — statements that had to be walked back, denied and spun by horrified White House staff.
When Biden said of his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, “The only garbage I see out there are his supporters,” staffers waved their arms and jumped up and down, exclaiming, “No, no — you’re missing an apostrophe,” which apparently made all the difference.
How does this happen? And who are these people? Who gets to tell the president that he’s a dotty idiot — that he’s said another no-no, and it’s back in the box with him?
Who is actually there when Biden isn’t?
Is it his wife, the splendid Dr. Jill? His sister, Valerie Biden Owens, described by Wikipedia as “an American political strategist”? Or his White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients?
While whole regions of the globe bleed and burn, who makes these awful decisions on behalf of the wealthiest and most powerful country of all? Is it national security adviser Jake Sullivan — or maybe the ineffable Antony Blinken?
For most of Biden’s tenure, staffers were represented as mere underlings cleaning up behind rare slip-ups by the boss.
After his cognitive incapacity was painfully demonstrated in the debate with Trump, and especially after he dropped out of the presidential race, the story changed.
Family and staff, the new line went, had overprotected the president. Out of affection and loyalty, they had “covered up” Biden’s now universally acknowledged decline.
This profoundly misrepresents the situation that has prevailed for the past four years.
Whoever has been making decisions on Biden’s behalf criminally usurped presidential power. In 2020, American voters didn’t elect Jill or Valerie Biden, Sullivan or Blinken — they elected Joe Biden and invested him with the tremendous powers of the presidency.
The Post’s cover from Sept. 21, 2024, on Jill Biden running a cabinet meeting.
If, in the way of all flesh, Biden had become too incapacitated to perform his duties, he could have resigned or been removed by invoking the 25th Amendment.
The coterie around Biden knew exactly what was happening. It wasn’t subtle. “Joe Biden is, like, dead. Not literally. He can’t, like, say a sentence,” observed Henry Appel, a national security staffer.
Those closest to the president must have seen him at his worst.
Yet they chose to perpetrate a fraud in which Biden was turned into a scripted sock puppet and they got the thrill of running the world.
“Blind ambition” is a banal phrase — but the kind of blindness to consequences involved in this scandal would make Lady Macbeth blush. The entire federal government, all that time, was flying blind, like an aircraft eternally circling on automatic pilot.
I have, as you can tell, too many questions, but I will limit myself to the two big ones.
The first one is: What actual persons in the administration — names and addresses, please — made the calls in the persistent trampling on our citizen rights?
Someone ordered for Catholic groups and anti-transgender parents to be treated as terrorists by the FBI and Homeland Security. Someone erected and allocated funds for a tentacular online censorship structure that silenced or downranked opinions distasteful to those in power.
Someone “debanked,” or cast out of the financial system, persons lawfully working on artificial intelligence and crypto. Someone perverted the prosecutorial authority to hound and persecute political opponents, particularly of the Trumpist variety.
We know Joe Biden didn’t commit any of those unconstitutional acts. He was too far gone.
So who did? And what should be their penalty?
My second question is: Where the heck were the news media while this clown show was going on?
Everyone with eyes to see could tell that Biden had slipped to a far place, from which there was no returning. Most of us have had a parent or grandparent who arrives at that sad hour — suddenly, the parent is the child, and the child becomes the parent.
The condition was already visible from the beginning — from before the beginning, or else why did Biden conduct the 2020 campaign from the comfy couch in the basement of his Delaware home?
The media are supposed to speak truth to power. They’re supposed to have many sources, deep connections. Journalism’s noble purpose, we are told, is to inform the public, to make better citizens out of the ignorant masses.
None of that, of course, was ever true — but it now stands exposed as a laughable falsehood.
Reporters have special passes to the White House. They accompanied Biden on his trips, often on Air Force One. They saw what Appel saw: a president who “can’t say sentences.”
And they chose to think nothing of it, to say nothing, to remain at best incurious and at worst to lie and so curry favor with the mighty.
The news media’s corruption is too evident to need elaboration. But there ought to be consequences.
Here’s a modest proposal: Disband the White House press corps. Cast them out like money-changers from the temple. Select those American citizens entitled to question the president by lot, the way the Athenians chose their public officials.
Frustratingly, what we have come to call for convenience’s sake the “Biden administration” has decided to go out in style.
Hundreds of pardons and commutations have been awarded just because they could be.
Foul murderers sitting on death row have been preserved from execution and will live on the taxpayers’ largesse until the end of their days. Why was this done? Maybe someone in the White House can explain.
Medals were also dispensed like candy to political allies. Liz Cheney, of all people, got one.
Biden presenting former Rep. Liz Cheney with the Presidential Citizens Medal on Jan. 2, 2025.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Cheney lost her last primary by a margin of 30%. Her vast unpopularity, I suppose, made her a hero to the establishment.
On Monday, Biden “permanently” banned offshore drilling, one of the reams of allegedly irreversible regulations that have been issued. On December 3, Biden surpassed his former boss, Barack Obama, for regulatory obesity added to the Federal Register in a single year: 96,088 pages.
Who directed this pointless last-minute frenzy? One nanosecond after Trump enters the White House, those irrevocable mandates, even if carved in stone, will be wiped away with a single stroke of the pen.
Led by the president-elect — who is, if anything, too present — a host of rebels and reformers is approaching Washington, DC. A distant rumble can already be heard.
Never in my lifetime has there been greater need for change.
The new crowd will attempt to put the bureaucracy on the Stone Age diet. I wish them luck. But what I want at the moment is credible answers about their predecessors — who did what to whom, and why.
Change can only follow in the footsteps of truth.
That process of discovery will begin in a few days, after the president who was never there has finally gone away.
Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst who writes about the relationship between politics and media.
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- Encouraging initial data for IMM-1-104 monotherapy in second-line pancreatic cancer, including a 67% reduction (PR), demonstrate activity and support development in first-line combinations; over 75 patients enrolled across all three Phase 2a pancreatic arms -
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- Company to hold webcast today at 8.30 am ET /5:30 am PT -
Immuneering will host a conference call and live webcast at 8:30 a.m. ET / 5:30 a.m. PT on January 7, 2025, to discuss the data and provide a business update. Individuals interested in listening to the live conference call may do so by dialing (800) 715-9871 for U.S callers and (646) 307-1963 for other locations and reference conference ID 4497245, or from the webcast link in the “investors” section of the company's website at www.immuneering.com A webcast replay will be available in the investor relations section on the company’s website for 90 days following the completion of the call.
