Woman shoved in front of NYC subway train by ex gives tearjerking speech at his sentencing
Ada Blake delivered a gut-wrenching victim impact statement yearning about sensations she's missed since doctors amputated both her legs as her parolee ex-beau Christian Valdez, 36, was slapped with a sentence of 18 years behind bars.
4 Christian Valdez was sentenced to 18 years in prison Tuesday for shoving Ada Blake in front of an oncoming Manhattan subway in March 2024.
Steven Hirsch
Advertisement
'An iteration of me was murdered that day. One that could feel the earth beneath her feet,' victim Ada Blake said from a motorized chair in Manhattan Supreme Court of the horrific March 2024 attack at Fulton Street.
'(To) feel the comfort of a soft filler, feel the pile of a shag carpet, feel the water flow between your toes… I mourn the life that I lived with my feet.'
Valdez had pleaded guilty in June to one count of attempted murder in the second degree.
Advertisement
Blake, who was 29 at the time of the attack, was Valdez's girlfriend when the pair got into an argument on the platform of the 2/3 train line at the Fulton Street station on March 9, 2024, prosecutors have said.
4 Victim Ada Blake, who lost both of her legs in the subway attack, said she yearns to feel the 'earth beneath her feet' again.
Steven Hirsch
'He viciously threw me into the path of the oncoming and in genuine disbelief, my body made contact with filth and screaming steel,' Blake said, revealing that she remembered 'bits of flesh' from her legs in her own hands when she was rescued from the tracks.
Both of Blake's legs were amputated at a nearby hospital, and she also suffered fractures to her ribs and a blood clot in her lungs, prosecutors have said.
Advertisement
4 Members of the FDNY and NYPD pulled the victim off of the subway tracks after her boyfriend pushed her at the Fulton Street Station. Both feet were severed.
William Farrington
Valdez left the station after the attack before fleeing to New Jersey. He returned to the Big Apple hours later and he was arrested in Brooklyn.
The psycho, who offered no apology in court, had torn off his ankle monitoring bracelet just a day before the attack.
4 Christian Valdez was out on parole at the time of the attack.
Steven Hirsch
Advertisement
He was out on parole after a 2020 conviction for stabbing a Bronx woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Blake said that she will 'never feel safe or comforted' riding the subway again after the attack.
'Perverse circumstances have left me traumatized, disfigured and marginalized even further and vulnerably on Earth as an African American disabled female,' she said.
Valdez was also sentenced to five years post-release supervision and given a full order of protection against the victim.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that he hopes Blake will find some justice with the sentencing.
'Christian Valdez will serve nearly two decades in prison following his conviction for committing a life-threatening act of domestic violence in our transit system,' Bragg said.
'As a result of this extremely serious attack, the victim has permanent physical injuries, and experiences emotional trauma. I hope the resolution of this case offers her some sense of justice.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
26 minutes ago
- New York Post
NYC shootings have plunged to record lows this year, NYPD Commish Jessica Tisch says ‘we are resetting the curve'
The guns aren't blazing. Shootings and the number of New Yorkers who fell victim to gun violence have plunged to all-time lows so far this year — even as the Big Apple contended with its worst mass shooting in 25 years, new NYPD crime statistics show. The Big Apple saw 412 shooting incidents, with 489 victims, during the first seven months of 2025, according to the data, released by the police department this week. Both are records that comfortably shatter the previous lows for shootings — 426 — and shooting victims — 522 — respectively, set over the same time frame in 2017 and 2018, cops said. When the NYPD began tracking such data at the beginning of the CompStat era in 1993, there were a whopping 3,114 shootings and 3,451 victims of gun violence, police said. 'Summer is usually the toughest test for public safety, but the wins that we are celebrating today prove that under Mayor Adams' leadership, we are not just passing the test, we are resetting the curve,' said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch during a Monday event outlining the numbers. 4 NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch this week celebrated major drops in crime. Stephen Yang 4 Mayor Eric Adams has tried to highlight his record on public safety to boost his re-election campaign. Stephen Yang The declines come as Mayor Eric Adams tries to salvage his re-election bid against Democratic socialist frontrunner Zohran Mamdani by focusing on public safety. Crime shot up after Adams took office in 2022 amid social upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But it has steadily declined across New York City and the nation alike with COVID in the rearview mirror. Overall major crime for the first seven months has steadily declined in the last three years, NYPD data reveals. Those months during Adams' first year in office had 72,369 crimes reported. Up to July 31 this year, there was a 5% dip compared to that time frame in 2021, with 68,740 of those so-called index crimes reported. But this year's overall lower crime numbers, while welcome, still fall far behind the 53,089 in the first seven months of pre-pandemic 2019. Index crimes include: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto. July was also the 10th straight month that major crime fell, with a 5.6% overall drop compared to the same time last year, data shows. Shootings and victims of gun violence also hit the lowest levels for any July on record in the city, with 75 and 92, respectively, Tisch said. The previous July record lows for shootings and shooting victims were 79 and 102, respectively, in 2017. 'This comes just weeks after we had the safest July 4th weekend for gun violence ever recorded,' Tisch said. 4 Shootings hit record lows for the first seven months of the year. Robert Mecea 4 The span included the horrific July 28 mass shooting in Midtown. Robert Miller The span also included the July 28 massacre by crazed gunman Shane Tamura, who killed four people — including NYPD Officer Didarul Islam — inside a Midtown skyscraper before turning the gun on himself. Most major felonies also showed dramatic drops in July compared to the same month in 2024, the data shows. Robbery fell 7.5%, felony assault dropped 8.2% and burglaries plunged 14.2%, according to the data. 'Murders were down by 49%, and in our subways, excluding the two pandemic years, it was the safest July in recorded history,' Tisch said. Rape, however, continued to show a troubling increase. The vile, historically underreported crime was up 33%, with 193 rapes reported citywide in July compared to last year, data reveals. The NYPD has pinned the increase on a state law passed in September 2024 that expanded the legal definition of rape to better reflect the full range of sexual assaults.
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Replace cops with social workers, 'transit ambassadors' on some 911 calls: Mamdani
Social workers and other non-police professionals like "transit ambassadors" should handle certain 911 calls to ease NYPD workloads and improve officer retention, New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani said Monday. Mamdani's position on law enforcement and public safety took center stage following a mass shooting in Manhattan on July 28 that killed four people, including a police officer. In light of the tragic shooting, Mamdani's critics began slamming him for past remarks about defunding the police in New York City. Mamdani was once again asked about his approach to crime and public safety Monday in a press conference with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., when he offered up his idea. "I've said time and time again that every decision I make with regards to the NYPD will work backwards from an outcome of public safety and that public safety, we know, it is one that also comes from listening to officers themselves," Mamdani said Monday. The self-described socialist candidate went on to cite "forced overtime" as a leading cause for many New York City police officers' decision to leave their jobs, noting that NYPD officers receive around 200,000 emergency calls pertaining to a mental health crisis every year. "The fact that every year we ask them to take on additional responsibilities – we are making it more and more difficult for them to respond to the very responsibilities that drew them to the job in the first place," Mamdani argued. "New Yorkers rightfully have concerns around public safety, and I want to empower police officers to respond to serious crime and hire the mental health professionals to respond to mental health calls." To explain the issue further, Mamdani pointed to a hypothetical incident involving a distressed tourist, arguing officers are forced to use resources to answer these calls, but that could end if the city were to hire a "transit ambassador." "This forced overtime is something that we can expect. It's not a surprise. It's a requirement of so much of the asks that we are making of these officers," Mamdani told reporters, in response to questions about his proposal to help reduce law enforcement overtime. "When we ensure that it's not an officer who has to stand in the middle of the Times Square subway station and answer a question from a tourist about which exit works, and which escalator they can take, and what line is running with delays or without them, but that we actually have a transit ambassador such that that officer can focus on serious crime, it starts to reduce the kind of overtime that has ballooned." Meanwhile, during a podcast appearance in 2020, the same year Mamdani made his now infamous social media posts calling to defund the NYPD, the socialist candidate for mayor also suggested police should not be the ones responding to domestic violence calls. "If somebody is surviving, going through domestic violence – there are so many different, different situations that would far better be handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun who has received quite a limited amount of training in general," Mamdani said at the time. In response to Mamdani's calls to have social workers, not police officers, respond to certain 911 calls related to mental health crises, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, himself a former NYPD captain, called the idea "irresponsible" and "reckless." "So when you put civilians in harm's way to respond to a domestic violence incident, that's irresponsible and it's reckless," Adams said while criticizing Mamdani's public safety platform, according to CBS News. In Mamdani's 17-page public safety plan released earlier this year amid his race to be the Democratic Party's candidate for NYC mayor, he diverged from many of his primary opponents in that he did not envision hiring more officers to the force, according to the New York Times. Rather, per his plan, Mamdani would work to create a Department of Community Safety aimed at expanding mental health teams and other non-law enforcement personnel who can respond to certain 911 calls. Mamdani's proposal also spoke to eliminating the NYPD's overtime budget and its task force that is responsible for dealing with protests, according to The Times. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been a staunch critic of Mamdani's approach to public safety and police, released his public safety platform on Monday, calling for increasing the number of officers on the NYPD's force by about 5,000. Cuomo, who is running as an Independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic Party primary, also wants to increase officer pay and improve access to benefits and pensions for retired officers.
Fox News
6 hours ago
- Fox News
Adams asks 'where was' Mamdani at previous NYPD funerals
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has ripped his Democratic mayoral opponent Zohran Mamdani for attending the funeral of slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam last week – but skipping services for other fallen officers killed during his time in the state Assembly – and never publicly acknowledging their deaths. Adams, a former NYPD captain, suggested Mamdani's presence at Islam's funeral was politically motivated and inconsistent with his prior stance on policing – which included calls to defund the agency and slamming it as racist. Mamdani has since walked back those statements. "We lost officers before he was running for mayor. Where was he? Did he feel those officers deserve to be lifted up as he lifted up now Officer Islam during the election? We need to ask, where was he?" Adams told reporters at City Hall on Monday, per the New York Post. "You should lift up officers when you're not running for mayor. He could have lifted them up when he was an assemblyman. He could have done it over the years when he was in Albany." Mamdani, a socialist who has served in the New York State Assembly since January, did not attend the funerals of six of NYPD's finest who died in the line of duty from 2022 through March of this year, Adams said. "Not one time has [Mamdani] said something in response to a police officer who's been shot or killed," Adams said, pointing out the 2022 killing of officers Wilbert Mora, Jason Rivera. "We cannot find one tweet that he made, or one comment that he made when that happened." As well as Mora and Rivera, the NYPD's Jonathan Diller, Troy D. Patterson, Lawrence Bromm and crossing guard Krystyna Naprawa were all killed during that time period. Mamdani cut short his recent trip to Uganda and returned early to attend Islam's funeral. He first went directly to the family's home and stayed with them for two hours, per reports. Fox News Digital has reached out to Mamdani's team for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Islam was gunned down by alleged shooter Shane Tamura of Las Vegas last week inside the lobby of office tower at 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Tamura is alleged to have killed three other people in the rampage before turning the gun on himself. Mamdani initially took to X to share his condolences on the passing of Islam. "I'm heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in Midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer in critical condition in my thoughts. Grateful for all of our first responders on the ground," Mamdani posted to X. But the Ugandan-born lawmaker has been a vocal critic of the NYPD in the past. In a June 8, 2020, post, Mamdani wrote, "No, we want to defund the police," and he wrote that "queer liberation means defund the police" in a Nov. 5, 2020, post. "We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your deal with [New York City mayor] uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts - defund the police," he posted on June 28, 2020. In December of the same year, he also called for it to be "dismantled." "All this misery. All for money. In the last budget, the City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half. They simply refused. There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence," he wrote. However, he sang a different tune during a mayoral debate in his primary. "I will not defund the police. I will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in public service, public safety," he said. On his campaign website, he calls for the creation of a Department of Public Safety. "Police have a critical role to play. But right now, we're relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net—which prevents them from doing their actual jobs. Through this new city agency and whole-of-government approach, community safety will be prioritized like never before in NYC," the website states.
