On Wednesday, a woman accused of attacking a subway cellist with a bottle tried to plead guilty, but her plea was reversed in a bizarre scene in a Manhattan courtroom.
Amira Hunter, 23, was charged in Manhattan Supreme Court with assault for punching cellist Ian S. Forrest in the head during a performance at the Herald Square subway station on February 19.
When asked by a clerk how he intended to plead the assault charge, Mr Hunter immediately replied “guilty”, but a furious lawyer, Molly Comes, intervened and refused to say anything further. I did it like that.
The two had a private conversation in the defense bench inside Judge Gregory Caro’s courtroom, after which the judge asked if the lawyer would change her plea, and she agreed.
Hunter, wearing a beige prison jumpsuit, then smiled during the trial and stuck out his tongue several times at photographers in the jury room. So prosecutors asked a judge to increase her bail after she was arrested for shoplifting on March 5. She was released under the supervision of Judge Marva Brown in the subway attack case.
Hunter was again handcuffed and brought before a judge on suspicion of stealing a $325 Moncler baseball cap from a Midtown Nordstrom.
The same judge then set bail at $500 and again ignored the prosecutor’s request for $10,000 bail.
But this time, the judge sided with prosecutors, who had asked for Hunter’s bail to be set at $15,000 cash, increasing his bail to either $10,000 cash or $10,000 partial bond.
Hunter’s attorney tried to argue for $1 bail, arguing that Hunter was unable to pay the initial bail amount because he had no income.
He also said that if Hunter had been able to make bail in the first place, he would have sought a higher level of supervised release, and argued that Hunter was not violent despite his arrest.
But the judge didn’t understand that, telling Hunter’s attorney that “there is clearly no record of her reporting to supervised release.”
“She did not follow the rules of supervised release,” the judge said.
“She was rearrested.”
Hunter was watching Forrest, 29, play an electric cello inside the West 34th Street subway station when she snuck up behind the musician and hit him in the back of the head with a metal water bottle. He is said to have punched him.
The attack was captured in a now-viral video.
After the attack, Forrest said he reached a “breaking point” when he was attacked a second time while performing in a basement.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that subway entertainers have the right to perform in a safe environment and should not feel threatened by others.
“Subway musicians bring joy to New York’s bustling subways and have a right to perform in a safe environment. Amira Hunter’s random and violent actions, as alleged, have led to subway musicians being unlucky. “I have suffered untold pain,” Bragg said.
“Anyone who threatens the safety of New Yorkers who use public transportation will be held accountable. We hope the victim continues to recover from this assault.”
Mr Hunter is scheduled to return to court on June 20th.
