Amira Hunter, 23, was newly arrested in Midtown on Tuesday after she allegedly swiped a $235 Moncler baseball cap from Nordstrom department store on W. 57th St.

The new bust came just five days after she was nabbed for attacking Iain Forrest, a 29-year-old medical student who was playing his electric cello as part of the MTA’s Music Under New York program, in the Herald Square station the evening of Feb. 13.

The unprovoked assault, which left Forrest convinced that the subway system is too dangerous for him to continue his playing, was caught on video taken by straphangers watching him perform “Titanium” by Sia.

At her arraignment last Thursday, Hunter was put on supervised release and directed to go to a homeless shelter. During the arraignment, she screamed that she and Forrest “were not strangers.” But when asked outside court why she attacked the medical student, she simply said, “I don’t know why.”

Hunter was next arrested about 3:40 p.m. on Tuesday when she was allegedly caught swiping the pricey hat from Nordstrom and stuffing it into her handbag. Workers stopped her as she tried to exit the store.

She was charged with petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. Her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Wednesday.

Hunter lives in East New York, Brooklyn, and had seven prior arrests before she was nabbed for striking Forrest last month, according to cops. Four of the arrests involve domestic violence, two are for petty larceny and the most recent one, last October, is for grand larceny and involves shoplifting, police said.

NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper mentioned Hunter’s new arrest Wednesday as he complained about recidivist criminals being put back out on the street.

“It took detectives a week and a half [to arrest Hunter], but they made the arrest,” Kemper said on NY1 with Mayor Adams by his side. “She had multiple prior arrests, but she also had two active bench warrants for failure to report to court on open court cases and the judge released her.”

“Well, guess what, she was arrested again yesterday in Manhattan,” Kemper added.

Forrest said last month’s attack, which came in the wake of an unrelated assault on him in Times Square last May, convinced him the subway system, as “exciting” as it is, is too dangerous a place for him to perform.

“It does kind of break my heart that this is something that has to stop indefinitely, barring some sort of systemic change with protection for performances in the subway,” he said.

Gov. Hochul is deploying 750 members of the Guard and 250 state and MTA police officers to subway stations to inspect passengers’ bags following a spate of violent incidents across the system.

“No one heading to their job or to visit family or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon,” Hochul said Wednesday beside MTA Chairman Janno Lieber in front of a giant system map at the MTA’s Rail Control Center.

“They shouldn’t worry about whether someone’s going to brandish a knife or a gun.”

The random checks will fall well short of the body scans and pat downs of airport-level security. Straphangers are already familiar with how this will work — cops at tables performing random bag checks have appeared at subway turnstiles from time to time in the 22 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Transit officials said the state support would simply allow for more such spot checks throughout the system, and that the National Guard, MTA police or other state law enforcement won’t be patrolling the trains.

The additional law enforcement power is one of a slate of state actions Hochul hopes will reduce crime underground — a “five-point plan [to] rid our subways of violent offenders and protect all commuters and transit workers,” as she put it.

“I am sending a message to all New Yorkers — I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles,” she said

Besides the bag checks, the five initiatives include a $20 million plan to beef up the number of clinical teams responding to people in mental distress on subways from two to 10 systemwide.

Another of Hochul’s five initiatives is her support for the MTA’s plan to install surveillance cameras inside conductor and train-operator cabs. That initiative is a direct response to the slashing of MTA conductor Alton Scott, who narrowly survived a random assault last week when he stuck his head out of his cab as his train stopped at a Brooklyn subway station.

“If a camera had been positioned in Alton Scott’s conductor cabin last Thursday, we probably would have already apprehended the person who slashed his neck,” Hochul said.

“Today I’m directing the MTA to install cameras in every single conductor cabin, as well as [on] platforms that face the cabins,” she added.

No platform-mounted camera caught Scott’s attacker last week either.

MTA officials have stated that the station had multiple working surveillance cameras, but none were pointed at the conductor’s mid-platform position when Scott’s late-night A train pulled into the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Transit brass declined to comment Wednesday on how many other stations might need upgrades to their camera coverage, citing security concerns.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 has long opposed putting cameras in conductor and operator cabs, citing privacy concerns. The MTA said last week it will install the cameras anyway.

A Local 100 spokesman said Wednesday that the union will support the installation so long as the cameras are solely for safety purposes, and are not used to support disciplinary cases against union members.

Hochul’s fourth initiative is proposed legislation to ban anyone convicted of an assault on transit from the system for three years. Currently the law allows a ban only on those who are convicted of assaulting a transit worker.

Her fifth initiative is improved coordination between MTA officials and district attorneys and police. That initiative will include regular meetings to discuss subway crime, the first of which is scheduled for next week.

As part of that fifth initiative, Hochul said, the MTA will hire a new “criminal justice advocate to assist the victims of crime in the system,” and develop a system to “flag recidivist offenders” to district attorneys.

NYPD brass and MTA leaders blame the uptick in crime on repeat offenders.

“One percent of subway arrestees, according to the NYPD, are responsible for well over 20% of the crime,” MTA boss Lieber said. “We need to have a collaboration with the [district attorneys] so they have that full information.”

The NYPD is fighting a 15.5% jump in felony assaults at city subway stops and trains.

Police have counted 97 such assaults in the subway system this year as of Sunday, 13 more than in the same period of 2023.

Misdemeanor assaults — slaps, punches and other relatively minor attacks — are down 3.9% for the year, with 249 misdemeanor assaults as of Sunday, 10 fewer than the 259 that had occurred by this time last year.

NYPD brass has said grand larcenies — property theft and pickpocketing — are the main thing pushing crime rates up in the subway system. Those crimes are up 17.8%, from 163 reported incidents last year to 192 this year.

There have been three homicides on the transit system so far this year, up from one this time last year.

The most recent was two weeks ago, when a man was fatally shot two weeks ago while on board a southbound B train in the Bronx.

On Tuesday, police arrested a man for allegedly stabbing a passenger onboard an uptown A train in what cops described as a hate crime.

Arrests in the system are up 45% over last year, according to police, with 3,261 arrests so far as of Sunday, up from 2,243 last year.

Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Adams — who did not join Hochul at her announcement — said NYPD officers will also be increasing bag checks in the subway system.

Neither the mayor nor transit officials would say at which stations the ramped-up bag checks will take place. An Adams administration spokesperson said there will be 94 NYPD bag screening teams deployed to 136 stations each week.

“They’re going to be a seven-day-a-week operation,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said in a Wednesday morning appearance with Adams on CBS New York.

Adams said the checks will be “random” and that the Police Department won’t engage in any “profiling.”

“People who don’t want their bags checked can turn around and not enter the system,” he said.

The governor’s plan to put National Guard soldiers in the subway system was met with alarm from civil libertarians.

“This plan is whiplash inducing. The city only recently trumpeted safety data,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“These heavy-handed approaches will, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and Brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight out of the Giuliani playbook,” she said, comparing Hochul to the former Republican mayor.

Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed specific concern about the use of the National Guard.

“We shouldn’t militarize the MTA when crime rates are falling and budgets are contracting,” he said in a statement.

“I fear how many New Yorkers will be wrongly arrested or hurt before we recognize that soldiers have no place on the streets of democracy.”

The victim was crossing Canal St. at Lafayette St. just before 5 a.m. when the driver of a dark-colored SUV plowed into him and kept going, cops said.

Medics found the victim sprawled out on the asphalt suffering from extensive injuries to his head and body. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital but couldn’t be saved.

The victim, believed to be in his 30s, wasn’t carrying ID and police are working to determine his identity.

Cops were scouring the area for the SUV Wednesday. No arrests have been made.

Several hours later in Queens, a 63-year-old woman riding an electric scooter was fatally struck by a Honda CR-V driver, cops said.

The victim was zipping west along College Point Blvd. near Blossom Ave. in Flushing around 10 a.m. when she was struck.

The SUV driver was also headed west on College Point Blvd. but hit the scooter rider while turning off the heavily traveled thoroughfare, cops said.

The scooter rider was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens, where she died. Her name was not immediately released.

The 41-year-old woman driving the Honda remained at the scene. No charges were immediately filed.

With Sheetal Banchariya

George Gardner, 30, parked his ride on E. 81st St. near First Ave. on Monday night, he told the Daily News.

Hours later, he discovered his 2019 BMW M4 jacked up off the ground and missing a wheel — again.

“He left the jack, so it didn’t trigger the antitheft system,” Gardner surmised.

It was the second time in five months he went outside to find his car missing a wheel, which retails for about $1,400, in the neighborhood.

“I was just kind of sitting there stunned that this happened again,” said Gardner. “Then I’m waiting for the police and the officer noticed me. She was like, ‘I know you, this car is familiar.'”

The same cop responded to his call for help on Oct. 3, when the thief was caught on camera stealing Gardner’s wheel.

After another one went missing, Gardner again went searching for surveillance footage, which a superintendent at a nearby building provided him with.

As the frustrated man reviewed the video, he noticed the grainy shots of the thief’s getaway car appeared to match the one from the October larceny.

“The mannerisms look so familiar,” Gardner said. “I was like, that’s the guy, for sure.”

Gardner usually keeps his car at his parents’ northern New Jersey home, but since he’s mother’s health began to decline, he’s been keeping it outside his Upper East Side place, too, allowing him to make quick trips as needed.

“There are parts of the city where you think you didn’t get hit with a crime like this,” said Gardner, who lives in the posh neighborhood with his girlfriend.

He will have to fork over another $500 to his insurance company to replace the wheel — a hefty fee he paid just months earlier.

The NYPD last year cracked down on car thefts as reports of stolen vehicles surged citywide, The News previously reported.

Last month, there were 967 cars stolen off city streets, according to NYPD data released Tuesday. The figure marked a 13% downtick from February 2023, when 1,111 car owners reported theft.

As first reported by the Daily News on Monday, the city has only received $49 million of that money because federal authorities say the Adams administration isn’t filing the right paperwork to secure the rest. One Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, even said Adams’ team hasn’t “stepped up to the plate” when it comes to putting the right application paperwork together for the remainder of the aid, which was allocated last year by Congress.

Asked why his administration’s struggling to furnish the right documentation, Adams sought Tuesday afternoon to flip the script back on the feds by noting the outstanding $107 million is small potatoes when compared with the $4 billion the city has spent so far on providing housing and services for migrants.

“Why don’t you go back to that person who stated we haven’t stepped to the plate, and say: ‘Have you guys stepped up to the plate and helping them with this $4 billion, securing the border, allowing people to have work authorization, make sure we have a decompression strategy?'” said Adams, who has for over a year lamented what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Biden administration. “Ask them: Have they stepped up to the plate? New Yorkers have stepped up to the plate.”

To offset migrant spending, Adams has in recent months enacted steep city budget cuts. The cuts have resulted in various service reductions, including the elimination of Sunday hours at all public libraries.

After the mayor’s briefing, a White House official told The News that the Biden administration wants to provide New York City with more financial help to alleviate the migrant-related fiscal burden, noting it supported the creation of a new $1.4 billion fund that’d reimburse cities across the U.S. for migrant costs. However, House Republicans have blocked that allocation.

“Of course, we would love to do more,” the White House official said.

Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, first revealed during a Council hearing Monday that the city has only received $49 million in migrant aid from the feds to date. In his testimony, Jiha said the city hasn’t been able to access the rest of the aid due to “stringent” eligibility requirements that make it “very difficult” to apply.

Neither Adams nor multiple top advisers who joined him for Tuesday’s briefing at City Hall would provide more details on what specifically in the requirements are tripping up their application.

“We’ll look into it and circle back to you,” Fabien Levy, Adams’ deputy mayor for communications, said when asked for specifics.

Sheena Wright, Adams’ first deputy mayor, suggested a finger should ultimately be pointed at the feds, not the mayor’s team.

“We know how to submit paperwork,” she said. “So I think the question is for them: Why haven’t these funds been released?”

Among other requirements, municipalities applying for the aid must provide names, dates of birth and so-called alien registration numbers for migrants who stand to benefit from the financial support, according to guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FEMA guidance also says spending on hotels cannot exceed 5% of the total amount of aid requested by any given municipality, a wrinkle that could pose a problem for the city, which is housing thousands of new arrivals in hotels.

According to Biden administration officials, FEMA dispatched a team to New York last week to help Adams’ office with resolving aid application snags.

However, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, claimed it’s “not true” a FEMA team came to New York when asked about the matter during Tuesday’s briefing.

“Why don’t they come and say, ‘Listen, this is what you need to provide,'” Lewis-Martin said. “If we give people paperwork to fill out and they cannot get it done, please assist them.”

Asked about Lewis-Martin’s comments, the White House official reiterated that the FEMA team was in New York last week and provided on-the-ground application support. The official said the administration would contact Lewis-Martin about the matter.

A City Hall spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Lewis-Martin misspoke.

The latest clash between the mayor’s team and the Biden administration comes as more than 60,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. Though he says he still supports Biden’s reelection bid, the mayor has been vocally frustrated for months with what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Democratic president, including declaring last year the commander-in-chief had “failed” New York City.

The outstanding federal migrant aid issue came up during a budget hearing held in the City Council on Tuesday, when Manuel Castro, Adams’ Immigration Affairs commissioner, testified that the city is banking on receiving the full $156 million from the feds this year.

Castro’s comment prompted Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a progressive Democrat, to note that the city has received less than a third of the outlay so far.

“There are some operational issues to address there,” she said.

Milton Hamlin, 46, is facing assault as a hate crime and menacing charges for the Friday night attack on a 27-year-old man seated on an uptown A train approaching 34th St.-Penn Station, cops said.

The victim was seated with his husband when Hamlin stormed up to them with a box cutter in his hand, cops were told.

“F—ing gay motherf—er!” Hamlin screamed as he lunged at the victim, according to cops.

The victim, a Bronx resident, raised his hand to deflect the attack but Hamlin allegedly cut into his hand, slicing the skin between the thumb and forefinger, cops said.

The victim and his husband got off the train at Penn Station and reported the incident to an Amtrak police officer. Medics took the victim to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated and released. He needed four stitches to close the gash.

Hamlin, who also lives in the Bronx, remained on the train and got away, according to cops.

The NYPD on Saturday released a cellphone image of the suspect in the hopes someone recognized him. Police tracked a photo of Hamlin down using facial recognition, which the victim and a witness positively identified as the attacker, NYPD Lt. John Russo said at a news briefing Tuesday.

“They were acting like every other couple on the train,” Russo said of the victim and his husband. “They were together and for whatever reason Milton Hamlin took exception.”

Cops tracked Hamlin down to a Bronx apartment Monday morning. He has an extensive criminal history with 11 arrests, mostly for grand larceny and robbery, police said.

He was added to the state’s sex offender registry in 2012 after he was convicted of attempting to lure a 16-year-old boy he knew into his home or car so he could sexually abuse the teen, according to court records. He served 19 months in prison before he was released in July 2013.  He also served 17 months in prison beginning in April 2007 for assault, records show.

His arraignment for the anti-gay assault was pending in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday.

The attack comes as the NYPD is fighting a 16% jump in assaults at city subway stops and trains.

As of Sunday, the city has seen 97 assaults in the subway system this year, 13 more than by this time last year. There were three murders in the city subways in the first two months of the year, cops said.

Recent subway assaults include a bloody scene in Brooklyn when a commuter slashed MTA conductor Alton Scott in the neck as the 59-year-old MTA employee stuck his head out of the conductor’s window at the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The woman, whose name is being withheld by The News, filed a so-called “notice of claim” in Manhattan Supreme Court in November saying she intended to sue the mayor for $5 million over allegations that he subjected her to “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination” while they both worked for the city Transit Police Department in 1993.

Since that brief filing, the woman and her attorney have declined to provide more details about her accusations. Adams, meantime, has vehemently denied the accusations, and his attorneys said as recently as a few weeks ago that he had yet to be served with her claim, a formality required to kick off any court proceeding.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, Sylvia Hinds-Radix, Adams’ corporation counsel who leads the city Law Department, filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court demanding that the woman provide “the complaint in this action” within 20 days.

The filing from Hinds-Radix indicates the initial claim has finally been served, as the Law Department otherwise wouldn’t be able to demand a full complaint.

Megan Goddard, the woman’s attorney, did not return a request for comment Tuesday, and neither did a spokesman for the mayor. A Law Department spokesman declined to comment.

In addition to Adams, the woman named the NYPD and the Guardians Association as defendants in her initial claim. The Guardians is a Black police officers’ fraternal organization that the mayor used to head in the 1990s.

Adams confirmed in November that he expected the Law Department to represent him in any case brought by the complainant.

The woman filed her claim under the Adult Survivors Act, a state law that opened a one-year window in 2022 for victims of sexual misconduct to sue their assailants even if the statute of limitations on the claim had expired. Adams’ accuser filed her notice of claim on Nov. 22, 2023, one day before the one-year window closed.

“If financial conditions improve and the economy remains strong, we will work with the Council, as we always do, to look at priorities of the Council and the administration and then see what can be fully or partially restored,” Jacques Jiha, who heads Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, said during an hourslong Council hearing.

Jiha made that comment after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) specifically asked him about undoing a $24 million cut that the mayor subjected the city’s three public library systems to in November that forced them to eliminate Sunday hours at all their branches.

Jiha declined to make any specific commitments, though.

“I cannot commit at this point in time that we are going to restore X, Y and Z,” the budget director testified.

The hearing, held to examine the mayor’s $109.4 billion preliminary budget proposal released in January, marked the official starting point of months of negotiations between the mayor’s office and the Council before they must come to an agreement on a city financial plan before the July 1 start of the 2025 fiscal year. In coming weeks, heads from nearly all city agencies will appear before the Council to testify about their budgetary needs.

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, the Council released a new revenue projection, first reported by the Daily News, that projects the city to be on track to rake in $3.3 billion more in income, property, sales and business taxes over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years than what’s predicted by Jiha’s office.

Council Democrats repeatedly argued in the hearing that their rosier revenue projections should allow the mayor to undo many of the budget cuts he pushed through in November and January on the auspice that the city needed to offset migrant crisis spending and accommodate Jiha’s lower tax revenue forecast.

“With higher than expected revenues in this fiscal year and a durable, resilient economy, I believe our city has the flexibility to reverse many cuts that have been made,” Speaker Adams said at Monday’s hearing.

Jiha did not say he’s ready to accept the Council’s new revenue estimate. He did tell Council members he’s “hoping that your forecast is right,” though.

Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, suggested after the hearing that he was optimistic.

“If both sides of City Hall can walk into the room with the same shared set of objective data, we will be fine,” Brannan said when asked if he’s hopeful about getting some of Mayor Adams’ cuts reversed. “Hardworking New Yorkers deserve nothing less.”

The mayor already undid some budget cuts in January, including at the NYPD, the FDNY and the Sanitation Department. He said he was able to do so because he had ordered his administration to drastically reduce the amount of money being spent on housing and services for newly arrived migrants.

In Monday’s hearing, Jiha said a key element of managing migrant spending is driving down the number of migrants in city shelters. The administration’s primary vehicle for reducing the census is its controversial 30- and 60-day policies, which limit how long migrants, including families with children, can stay consecutively in shelters.

“If we don’t bring down the population, I don’t know how we’re going to sustain this in the long run,” Jiha told Council members.

Jacques Jiha, the director of Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, disclosed the paltry amount the city has received so far during a marathon City Council hearing on Monday.

Asked why the city hasn’t received the full $156 million it was allocated, Jiha told Council members: “The [application] requirements are so stringent … but we’re working on it. We’re trying to collect the remaining $107 million.”

An official in President Biden’s administration told the Daily News later Monday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has for months provided the mayor’s team with “extensive technical assistance” to help the city access the full aid allocation. The official said that included dispatching a FEMA team to the city just last week to help walk Adams administration officials through the application process.

“Unfortunately, they have not stepped up to the plate,” said the Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid. “There really isn’t a federal government problem here. They just haven’t submitted the documentation to unlock the funds.”

Asked about the Biden official’s comments, an Adams spokeswoman said the mayor’s administration hasn’t missed any deadlines and is working with federal stakeholders on expediting the release of the remainder of the available funds.

The $156 million set aside for the city is part of an $800 million program administered by FEMA.

The program, established as part of budget negotiations in Congress last year, is designed to help alleviate costs incurred by municipalities across the U.S. that are seeing large influxes of mostly Latin American migrants.

The Biden administration official said multiple other U.S. cities have managed to unlock the full amount of their migrant aid allocations, including Chicago, which received about $32 million.

The FEMA initiative is based on a reimbursement model, meaning municipalities can apply to get costs covered after they’re incurred. Expenses eligible for reimbursement under the program include costs related to providing shelter, food, transportation, health care and other supportive services for newly arrived migrants, according to FEMA.

Ultimately, the FEMA cash is a drop in the bucket as compared to the total amount of money spent by New York City on the migrant crisis. As of the end of last month, the Adams administration has shelled out “just over $4 billion” on housing, feeding and providing services for the tens of thousands of migrants who remain in the city’s care, Jiha said.

Since migrants first started arriving in waves in spring 2022, the mayor has lamented what he sees as a lack of financial relief from the feds.

He has drawn the ire of some fellow Democrats for publicly saying Biden isn’t doing enough to help, including declaring last year that the president had “failed” the city. The mayor has also argued Republicans in Congress share blame for blocking long-sought immigration reforms.

When asked at Monday’s Council hearing whether Gov. Hochul is doing enough to help the mayor’s administration, Jiha deadpanned: “No.”

“We should be getting at a minimum a 50-50 share,” he added, referring to the mayor’s request for the governor’s administration to pick up half of the city’s migrant crisis tab.

Hochul’s executive budget unveiled last month set aside about $2.4 billion in state migrant aid for the city over the coming fiscal year, a proposal that falls short of the mayor’s 50%-50% demand.

Kenneth Taveras, 33, was shot multiple times in the chest at about 10:35 p.m. Sunday in a parking lot at the Polo Grounds Towers, a NYCHA complex in Washington Heights, according to cops

“He was excited to join the Army,” the victim’s mother Juana Taveras said. “His elder brother was in the Navy and Marines, but now he’s back. He always used to look up to his brother and was always interested in joining the services.”

Medics rushed Kenneth Taveras to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, but he could not be saved.

The grieving mother was visiting relatives in Jersey City when she got the news.

“When I came back the area was taped and the police were here,” she said. “They had already taken him to the hospital. I could not even see him until this morning.”

Three to five men drove off in a black pickup truck and are being sought, police said.

Kenneth Taveras had enlisted in the Army and was scheduled to report for duty in three months. He was enjoying letting his hair grow in the meantime, knowing a buzz cut was in his future.

The parking lot where he was killed is just outside the building where Taveras, the youngest of five siblings, shared an apartment with his mother and sister.

“He grew up here,” the mother said. “We never bother anyone. I don’t talk to anyone much except saying hello. I don’t know who did this, but I hope they have cameras in the parking lot. I think there are two cameras.”

“He was my baby,” she added. “When I last spoke to him yesterday, he was washing clothes in the washing machine.”

The grieving mother is mystified by a motive.

“No one has come to speak to me yet,” she said. “I have no idea what’s going on. No cops have told me anything.”

The victim had three arrests on his record, including busts for possession of a loaded gun and for assault, police sources said. His most recent arrest was in 2016.

Kenneth Taveras used to work for NYCHA before he took a job as a cleaner in a friend’s beauty salon near their home, his mother said. He had a girlfriend in Florida who was rushed to New York after getting the news.

So far this year through Feb. 25, 44 people citywide have been victims of homicides, a 27% downtick from the same period last year that saw 60 people slain, NYPD stats show.

But murders in the NYPD’s 32nd Precinct where Taveras was killed are up. Two people were killed in the precinct this year as of Sunday. By the same point last year just one person was the victim of a homicide.

Shootings are down so far this year citywide, with 109 incidents as of Feb. 25 compared with 159 by the same time in 2023.