Woman who bashed cello player arrested again: police
The woman released without bail after being charged with bashing a Manhattan subway station cello player in the head with a metal bottle has been arrested again, cops said Wednesday.
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.
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