Daily News: Raceless “Mugger wreaks havoc on Manhattan streets, robs five women since Wednesday”

By Nicholas Stix

On November 26, reader-researcher “W” sent me this story, with the note, “Check out the ‘description’ of the mugger. Are some details missing???”

A "fearless" mugger is on the loose on Manhattan's upper East Side, robbing five women in apartment buildings since Wednesday afternoon, cops said.

The balding bandit is running amok in one of Manhattan's toniest neighborhoods, where he is terrifying women with his devil-may-care daring: four of his five crimes occurred during daylight hours.

"I have a knife and I am not going to hurt you! I just want your money!" he barked at his most recent victim, a 26-year-old woman, cops said.

She was checking her mail about 2:30 p.m. Thursday inside the lobby of a building on E. 78th St. near the FDR Drive when he crept up behind her.

He took her money, iPod and watch - and also kept his word; she was not injured, cops said.

The mugger is in his 30s, about 6-feet-tall and 220 lbs, cops said. He struck twice on Thanksgiving and three times on Wednesday.

His earlier crime on Thanksgiving proved unsuccessful, but his 56-year-old victim was left terrified.

She was entering her apartment on E. 89th St. near Second Ave. about 10:15 a.m. when he approached her from behind and placed his hand over her mouth.

He forced her into the vestibule, and demanded she fork over her dough, cops said. When she screamed, he threw her to the ground and fled empty-handed on E. 89th St., heading west.

"It's honestly terrifying. It makes me feel sick," said Margo Buckley, 52, who lives in the same building. "Every woman here is afraid, because it seems like this guy's fearless."

Another building resident, who gave her name as Lauren, said the attack on her neighbor convinced her no neighborhood is ever truly safe.

"There's really no safe place left - nuts can get to you anywhere," she said. "No one's walking into the building alone now. We're going in in pairs."

In two of his three strikes on Wednesday, the suspect ran away when his victims began to scream….

He forced her back into her apartment and took cash and jewelry.

Cops said the bandit is clean shaven and nearly bald. He was last seen wearing a long, black leather jacket, a black sweater, dark pants and black sneakers.

[“Mugger wreaks havoc on Manhattan streets, robs five women since Wednesday,” by Kevin Deutsch and John Lauinger, Daily News, November 26th 2010, 4:00 AM.]

First of all, the assailant description is worthless, since it doesn’t tell you his race. And he’s not “balding,” since a video of him posted by WCBS-TV shows him to have a shaved head. He’s not “fearless,” or he would not have run off, when some of his would-be victims screamed. He’s likewise not a nut, because he responded rationally to disincentives. And the lack of safety of the Upper East Side, it’s great wealth notwithstanding, is not a reflection of all neighborhoods being unsafe, but of the lack of safety on the Upper East Side.

And surprise, surprise, the assailant is black.

Quite simply, black felons like the East Side Rapist know that they can lurk around the area at any time of the day or night, unmolested and unwatched, and that the Daily News will aid and abet them, by not only refusing to furnish readers with a usable description, but by misleading them, since “balding” is racially ambiguous, while “shaved head” sounds more typically black, as black men much more commonly shave their heads than whites.

In the meantime, a suspect is in custody, no thanks to the News: Tyrone Hunter, 55, is a persistent felony offender, whose (adult) record goes back to a first degree rape charge from 1972. Hunter is a “Level 3” sex offender, who has "spent most of his life in jail," according to Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Shanda Strain.

As DNAinfo Reporter/Producer Shayna Jacobs wrote,

[Hunter] was identified by prosecutors as a Level Three sex offender, a classification reserved for someone believed to be at high risk of repeating a sex crime.

Note that the m.o. of a black felon following women into their apartment building often leads to him raping them, as well as robbing them. The Upper East Side sees this sort of thing all the time, as white women wish not to appear “racist,” and refuse to exercise caution in the presence of strange, lone black men coming up on them, or lurking about.

Jacobs added,

Police believe Hunter also recently attacked women entering walk-up buildings on East 78th Street, East 79th Street, and East 69th Street.

“Attacked” is a common reporter’s euphemism for raped.

Note too that while the Daily News spoke of the assailant’s “devil-may-care daring,” it also depicted him as a gentleman: "I have a knife and I am not going to hurt you! I just want your money!" He “kept his word.”

What about the woman (women) whom Hunter is supposed to have raped-what had he promised her (them)?

Before Lemaricus Davidson beat Channon Christian bloody from head to toe, gang-raped her with his accomplices, and sexually tortured her, to the point where she was unrecognizable, even before he murdered her, he assured her that he wouldn’t hurt her, if only she would submit without resistance to him raping her. (And even if Davidson hadn’t murdered Christian or her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, what sort of evil mind sees raping someone as “not harming” her?)

Going back to the late 1980s, I have heard white women speak as if there were some implicit compact, whereby not resisting a black mugger compelled him to not harm them. “Thank God, I’m alive. They can have my money,” was the way one woman of a certain age put it.

Unfortunately for such dignified white folks, black felons never got the memo. One of the joys of victimizing whites is that you can do as you wish with them, acting with complete license. During the commission of such violent crimes, anything is possible.

The three women who resisted the would-be mugger (rapist?) deserve a round of applause; the Daily News deserves boos and bankruptcy.