A Turkish-born artist who moved to New York six years ago was immediately paralyzed from the neck down after a man allegedly pushed her into a moving subway in what a prosecutor on Wednesday described as a “completely unprovoked” attack.

Kamal Semrade, 39, has been charged with attempted second-degree murder and other felonies in the alleged attack on a subway station on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Sunday, according to a criminal complaint filed with the New York Criminal Court and obtained by NBC New York .

The 35-year-old victim suffered a fractured cervical spine, a head laceration and other injuries after Semrade “grabbed her head with both hands and shoved her into the moving subway car with all her might,” Assistant District Attorney Carolyn said McGuigan on Wednesday during Semrade’s indictment.

In a verified online fundraiser organized in part by her husband, the victim was identified as Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy.

Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy. (via GoFundMe)

She was immediately paralyzed and remains in critical condition with a high risk of death or stroke, McGuigan said.

The attack at Lexington Avenue and the East 63rd Street station occurred at 6:05 a.m. and was caught on security camera and seen by witnesses, McGuigan said.

Ozsoy, the former Istanbul newspaper headpage designer, moved to New York City in 2017 and wants to focus on her art, her husband said in a written statement released at the fundraiser. She was on her way to work at the time, he said.

She and Semrade were on the same train and got off in Manhattan, McGuigan said.

Semrade followed her – and then pushed her onto the train as it left the station “quickly,” McGuigan said.

“All I see is him walking beside her, on her left side, and with his palms open, he just bangs her head on the moving train,” witness Nancy Marrero told NBC New York.

Her body “wobbled in circles and she just fell on the platform,” Marrero told the broadcaster.

Semrade fled the station, McGuigan said. As Ozsoy lay on the subway platform, she said she couldn’t feel her arm and asked if she was dying, Marrero said, according to NBC New York.

The story goes on

“I thought, ‘You’re not going to die, don’t worry, I’m here,'” Marrero told the broadcaster. “I stay with you.”

Court records show that New York City police took Semrade into custody on Tuesday.

In the statement, Ozsoy’s husband Ferdi Ozsoy thanked the authorities and those who comforted his wife following the alleged assault. He said she underwent difficult surgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center and he expects a “long road to recovery” that will likely hamper her career as an award-winning artist, painter and illustrator.

Describing himself as his wife’s only family in the United States, Ferdi Ozsoy said he was applying for emergency visas for relatives who could help with their care.

“Your life after will require constant care,” he said.

A lawyer for Semrade, who was remanded in custody during Wednesday’s hearing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night. His next court date is scheduled for Friday.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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QUEENS, NY– The suspect in the murder of a New York mother of two whose body was found in a duffel bag made his first court appearance late Thursday night, and more details of the grisly crime emerged.

And while 44-year-old David Bonola is being prosecuted for murder, federal immigration authorities are looking into whether he entered the country illegally from his native Mexico 21 years ago and have filed a detainee with the court.

“ICE focuses its civil immigration enforcement priorities on the apprehension and removal of noncitizens who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security,” an ICE spokesperson said.

Prosecutors say the victim, 51-year-old Orsoyla Gaal, let Bonola inside her Forest Hills home in Queens and that the two had an on-again, off-again affair over the past two years.

The prosecution submitted a transcript of Bonola’s taped statement made to police, during which they say he confessed.

SEE ALSO | Handyman arrested in murder of NYC mom stabbed more than 55 times, stuffed in duffel bag

Gaal let him in “because she knew him,” but he overstayed his welcome, a prosecutor said, stating that Gaal asked Bonola to “leave multiple times” before he stabbed her nearly 60 times.

“The defendant and victim were known to each other,” assistant district attorney Josh Garland said. “Because she knew him, she let him into the house. He then engaged her in a verbal dispute and unfortunately she had to ask him to leave multiple times.”

Prosecutors also revealed Bonola allegedly slashed Gaal’s throat before stuffing her body in a hockey bag and dragging it and dumping it at the end of a long trail of blood that led back to Gaal’s home.

“Two boys are left without a mother and a young teenager faces the added trauma of being home when this heinous murder took place,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “As alleged, the defendant stabbed the victim over 50 times and then attempted to dispose of the body by stuffing it into a duffel bag and dragging it across a quiet residential neighborhood, leaving a trail of blood and a terrified community. The defendant is now in custody and will be held to account for this horrific crime.”

During the investigation, police recovered a bloody jacket and blood-stained tissues from inside Forest Park.

On Wednesday, the defendant offered to speak to police and, during questioning, made incriminating statements, police said.

Bonola allegedly revealed that some time on Saturday he went to a New York City hospital for a cut on his hand. He also told police he and the victim argued, he allegedly confessed to stabbing her and moving her body, according to prosecutors.

“Based upon information provided by persons known to the New York City Police Department and the Queens County District Attorney’s office, recovered video surveillance, and statements and admissions made by the defendant, David Bonola, that, at the above-mentioned date, time, and place of occurrence, the defendant did stab the victim, Orsolya Gaal, numerous times with a knife, thereby causing her death, after which he placed her body in a duffle bag and moved it to the sidewalk at another location,” the criminal complaint said.

Bonola was ordered held without bail on second-degree murder charges and, at the request of defense attorney David Strahan, was placed on suicide watch.

Bonola is due back in court next week. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

Copyright © 2022 WABC-TV. All rights reserved.

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Tom Kean Jr., the son of a popular two-term New Jersey governor, beat six Republican opponents Tuesday to win the nomination to compete against Representative Tom Malinowski, an embattled Democrat accused of ethical lapses, in what is shaping up to be the state’s most competitive midterm contest.

Another son of a storied New Jersey political family, Robert Menendez Jr., easily won a Democratic House primary, making it likely that he and his father and namesake, the state’s senior senator, will serve together in the Capitol.

Mr. Malinowski, 56, in a swipe at Mr. Kean’s three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress, said: “I want to do this job. He just wants to have this job.”

Mr. Kean, 53, who narrowly lost to Mr. Malinowski in 2020, said his opponent had “squandered” the opportunity to serve New Jersey during two terms in Washington.

Mr. Kean’s primary opponents had challenged him from the right as they competed for the support of conservative Republican voters aligned with former President Donald J. Trump. Outside a school near Mr. Kean’s home in Westfield, NJ, where he voted on Tuesday with his wife and daughters, a sign parroting one of Mr. Trump’s favorite labels read, “Warning RINO alert.”

But just after midnight, he was more than 22 percentage points ahead of his closest opponent in a race that was seen at least in part as a measure of Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, Gov. Thomas H Kean.

The largely suburban Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of affluent, well-educated voters who helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018.

During the last midterm cycle, Democrats in New Jersey flipped four seats—many of which, including Mr. Malinowski’s, are again seen as potential battlegrounds.

As he runs for re-election, Mr. Malinowski is facing allegations that he failed to report stock trades as required. He is also running in a district that gained more Republican-leaning towns when the borders were redrawn to reflect demographic changes in the 2020 census.

But late Tuesday, Mr. Malinowski’s campaign got a potential boost from an unlikely camp: Republicans hoping to make a home for centrist voters with the creation of a new party, the Moderate Party. The new party, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, has filed nominating petitions on behalf of Mr. Malinowski.

Mr. Menendez won in a largely urban district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans five to one; winning the primary in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes parts of New Jersey’s two largest cities, is often tantamount to victory in the general election.

A lawyer making his first run for office, Mr. Menendez had an array of political and union support early on — as well as crucial backing from his father, also a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Just after midnight, when The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Menendez, he was 70 percentage points ahead of his main challenger, David Ocampo Grajales.

If he wins in November, Mr. Menendez, 36, will occupy a seat held for a decade by Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat who announced in December he would not run for re-election.

Mr. Ocampo Grajales, the son of immigrants from Colombia, said last week that he had entered the race to give Democrats a viable alternative to a handpicked candidate.

“It’s not so much who Menendez is himself, but what he represents: more of the same,” said Mr. Ocampo Grajales, 25.

The New Jersey congressional candidate Tom Kean Jr., with his family, after voting at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, NJ, on Tuesday.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

A Republican primary in a central New Jersey swing district represented by Andy Kim, a Democrat running for his third term in Congress, was the state’s most colorful contest.

Bob Healey Jr., a former singer in a punk band who helps run his family’s yacht-manufacturing company, beat two challengers, Nicholas J. Ferrera and Ian A. Smith, with the backing of the Republican Party.

In March, Mr. Smith, the former owner of a gym that repeatedly flouted Covid-19 lockdown rules, was charged with driving under the influence, reviving talk of his past conviction for vehicular homicide. He served time in prison for killing a teenager in 2007 while under the influence of alcohol, and pleaded not guilty to the new charges.

“I may have sung in my past about killing someone,” Mr. Healey said during a debate in May. “Ian actually did kill someone.”

By midnight, the winner of the Republican primary to face Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat competing for re-election to a fourth term, had not yet been called.

Frank Pallotta, a wealthy former investment banker who lost to Mr. Gottheimer two years ago, was 5 percentage points ahead of Nick De Gregorio, a Marine Corps veteran, with about 85 percent of the vote counted.

Mr. Pallotta won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, but not this time. He also had raised significantly less money than Mr. De Gregorio, who had emphasized his service in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We did everything we possibly could, and we left no stones unturned,” Mr. De Gregorio said as he watched the returns come in from the Republican Party headquarters in Bergen County. “We went out there and we listened to what the voters had to say.”

Mr. Menendez will be a heavy favorite in November against Marcos Arroyo, a housing inspector from West New York, NJ, who was the lone Republican candidate to enter the race.

Mr. Menendez has said that, if elected, he would focus on expanding access to early childhood education and issues that affect the cost of living in New Jersey, where property owners pay some of the nation’s highest taxes.

“One of the things we’ve focused on — just because we don’t know the climate that we’re going to be walking into, should we win — is trying to think about what Democratic proposals haven’t been passed yet that we can have bipartisan support for,” Mr. Menendez said in an interview on Saturday.

Before being appointed to the Senate in 2006, Senator Menendez held the House seat that his son is now seeking. The borders of the district, formerly the 13th Congressional District, have since been redrawn slightly.

The state debuted a new electronic voting system in November, but this was the first time that New Jersey voters were offered a chance to cast ballots in person, on machines, during a primary election.

Still, with no statewide races on the ballot, turnout was low.

“We were told that we were the fourth and fifth people in our district to be voting today,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Tuesday morning, “and they’ve been open for a while.”

Shlomo Schorr contributed reporting.

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And while 44-year-old David Bonola is being prosecuted for murder, federal immigration authorities are looking into whether he entered the country illegally from his native Mexico 21 years ago and have filed a detainee with the court.

“ICE focuses its civil immigration enforcement priorities on the apprehension and removal of noncitizens who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security,” an ICE spokesperson said.

Prosecutors say the victim, 51-year-old Orsoyla Gaal, let Bonola inside her Forest Hills home in Queens and that the two had an on-again, off-again affair over the past two years.

The prosecution submitted a transcript of Bonola’s taped statement made to police, during which they say he confessed.

SEE ALSO | Handyman arrested in murder of NYC mom stabbed more than 55 times, stuffed in duffel bag

Gaal let him in “because she knew him,” but he overstayed his welcome, a prosecutor said, stating that Gaal asked Bonola to “leave multiple times” before he stabbed her nearly 60 times.

“The defendant and victim were known to each other,” assistant district attorney Josh Garland said. “Because she knew him, she let him into the house. He then engaged her in a verbal dispute and unfortunately she had to ask him to leave multiple times.”

Prosecutors also revealed Bonola allegedly slashed Gaal’s throat before stuffing her body in a hockey bag and dragging it and dumping it at the end of a long trail of blood that led back to Gaal’s home.

“Two boys are left without a mother and a young teenager faces the added trauma of being home when this heinous murder took place,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “As alleged, the defendant stabbed the victim over 50 times and then attempted to dispose of the body by stuffing it into a duffel bag and dragging it across a quiet residential neighborhood, leaving a trail of blood and a terrified community. The defendant is now in custody and will be held to account for this horrific crime.”

During the investigation, police recovered a bloody jacket and blood-stained tissues from inside Forest Park.

On Wednesday, the defendant offered to speak to police and, during questioning, made incriminating statements, police said.

Bonola allegedly revealed that some time on Saturday he went to a New York City hospital for a cut on his hand. He also told police he and the victim argued, he allegedly confessed to stabbing her and moving her body, according to prosecutors.

“Based upon information provided by persons known to the New York City Police Department and the Queens County District Attorney’s office, recovered video surveillance, and statements and admissions made by the defendant, David Bonola, that, at the above-mentioned date, time, and place of occurrence, the defendant did stab the victim, Orsolya Gaal, numerous times with a knife, thereby causing her death, after which he placed her body in a duffle bag and moved it to the sidewalk at another location,” the criminal complaint said.

Bonola was ordered held without bail on second-degree murder charges and, at the request of defense attorney David Strahan, was placed on suicide watch.

Bonola is due back in court next week. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

Copyright © 2022 WABC-TV. All rights reserved.

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San Francisco attorney Chesa Boudin is due to be removed from office next year after a backlash in one of America’s most liberal cities against its policies to reduce the number of people in prisons and prisons.

Election officials in San Francisco confirmed this week that supporters of the memorial had gathered enough signatures to force a June election when Californians vote in a statewide area code for gubernatorial and congressional seats. The prosecution competition will serve as a test of how far liberal prosecutors can go in changing the judicial system in a time of growing crime concerns.

Mr Boudin, a former public defender whose story as the son of imprisoned parents was the focus of his campaign two years ago, is one of a number of liberal prosecutors recently elected with promises to reduce incarceration and tackle racial prejudice within the EU Criminal justice system.

But Mr Boudin, like other liberal prosecutors in places like Philadelphia and Los Angeles, has faced stiff resistance from conservative activists, as well as other residents concerned for public safety, who say he is not cracking down on crime and that his policies are Made San Francisco less safe.

Mr Boudin also faced opposition in his own office, which had high turnover rates, with some prosecutors stepping down in protest of the ministry’s policies.

A homicide prosecutor in the office, Brooke Jenkins, said she supported Boudin’s efforts to reduce prison sentences and tackle racial prejudice, saying she identified as progressive, recently stepped down and did the recall efforts citing mismanagement and low morals supports.

“In my opinion, Chesa lacks a desire to actually and effectively prosecute crimes in any way,” said Ms. Jenkins. “Although he ran on a platform of progress and reform, his methodology for doing this is simply to release individuals early or offer very lenient plea offers.”

During his tenure, Mr. Boudin has become a polarizing figure in San Francisco, a place where many voters have embraced the idea of ​​reshaping the criminal justice system by locking fewer people away while getting tired of petty crime and scenes of desperation City streets.

Fears of growing crime have divided the city, despite not facing the kind of murder and gun violence that other major cities have seen since the coronavirus pandemic began. Unlike Oakland across the bay, which is facing a sharp rise in homicides, the top concerns in San Francisco are property crimes such as theft and break-ins, and quality of life issues such as drug trafficking in the open air and the proliferation of homeless camps.

“Everyone is saying why don’t the prosecution just pick these people up and throw them in jail so I won’t have to look at them again,” said Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, who is a supporter of Mr. Boudin . “That’s not how the law works. It is not a crime to be homeless. “

Mr Boudin described the recall efforts as being driven by traditional law-and-order conservatives who want to back off efforts such as not taking judges to cash bail, asking for lighter sentences and sending fewer juveniles to jail.

“This is clearly about reform of the criminal justice system,” he said. “This is a question of whether we will go ahead and continue to implement data-driven policies that put crime victims first, invest in crime-hit communities, and use empirical evidence to address the root causes of crime in our communities. if we go back to the failed policies of Reagan and Trump. “

While crime fears have fueled recall efforts, the data tells a more nuanced story: Overall, serious crimes fell 23 percent over the past year, although burglaries and car thefts increased, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

Part of the problem, Boudin said, is that police arrested fewer people – a problem he attributes in part to the pandemic because many perpetrators who wear masks to protect them from the virus are difficult to identify.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Boudin was leaving an event at a local university when a man came up to him and said, “When are you going to start arrests?”

“I told him I wasn’t going to start making arrests,” he said. “The public prosecutor’s office doesn’t do that. We’re not making any arrests. “

While some of the big money behind the recalls came from Conservative funders – the biggest funder for a previous action was David Sacks, a Conservative venture capitalist and former PayPal executive – the coalition opposing Mr Boudin also includes Democrats and others like Ms Jenkins, who describe themselves as progressive but consider Mr Boudin’s policy to be too radical.

These recall efforts follow a failed attempt to overthrow Governor Gavin Newsom, fueled primarily by conservative anger over the policies and business closings the governor used to contain the virus.

George Gascón, Mr Boudin’s predecessor as District Attorney for San Francisco, has faced similar efforts to remove him from office since he was elected Los Angeles Chief Prosecutor, who made a similar promise to reduce prison sentences. An initial signature-collection campaign has failed, but a new attempt to recall him is underway.

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