By The newspaper
May 31, 2024, 01:47 AM EDT
Three people were arrested in connection with a machete attack that left one person injured in broad daylight yesterday in Times Square in New York, an area considered a world-famous tourist mecca.
As of last night, it was unclear if the victim knew the trio. The injured man had cuts on both legs, according to the NYPD. The attack happened at West 45th Street and Broadway around 10 a.m. Thursday.
The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, according to NBCNews. The motive for the attack is unclear. The violent fight was apparently the result of a territorial dispute between people selling items in the area, according to ABCNews.
The three suspects fled, but were captured shortly after. Police charged Aaron Hamilton (25), Philip Robertson (23) and Robert Price (46) with reckless endangerment and obstruction of government administration. Robertson was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon, police said. It is not clear which of them used the machete against the victim.
This bloody fight was the latest outbreak of violence to make headlines in Times Square. This month a young mother of five miraculously survived being stabbed in the chest while she was working as a school tour guide and was so traumatized that she now doesn’t want to return to New York.
About 360,000 visitors enter the heart of Times Square each day, but pedestrian traffic compared to pre-pandemic levels remains low, according to the Times Square Alliance.
Since 2022, the NYPD’s Midtown South district, which covers Times Square and other nearby neighborhoods, has seen a 200% increase in shooting incidents and a 50% increase in assaults, according to police data. Rapes have also skyrocketed 40% in the last two years, he warned DailyNews.