The person who assaulted another New York City subway passenger while yelling anti-LGBTQ+ insults earlier this month is a registered sex offender with a long criminal history.
Law enforcement took 46-year-old Milton Hamlin into custody last Tuesday for the anti-LGBTQ+ attack. He is charged with assault as a hate crime and menacing as a hate crime. NBC News mentioned this..
Hamlin reportedly confronted the victim on a northbound A train between 14th Street and 34th Street Penn Station in Manhattan around 11 p.m. on March 1. The 27-year-old victim was sitting on the train with his spouse, according to the New York Daily News reported.
Police say Hamlin aggressively approached the victim shouting, “F—ing gay motherf—er!” and showing a boxcutter.
The victim tried to protect himself by raising his hand and got a cut between the thumb and forefinger. He and his spouse left the train at the 34th Street stop and called the police. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he got four stitches.
Hamlin stayed on the train, evading arrest. However, the NYPD released a cell phone picture of the suspect on March 2, and were able to identify Hamlin using facial recognition. The victim and witnesses accurately identified Hamlin as the attacker, according to NYPD Lt. John Russo.
Law enforcement arrested Hamlin at his Bronx apartment last Tuesday. He is seen in photos wearing the same grey puffer jacket with fur trimmed hood as in the cell phone image released by police after the assault.
The Daily News states that Hamlin has a lengthy criminal record. In addition to being arrested for grand theft and robbery, he has also been on New York’s sex offender registry since 2012. In that year, he was found guilty of attempting to sexually abuse a 16-year-old boy, serving 19 months in prison before being released in July 2013. Before that, he served 17 months in prison for assault.
During a press conference last week, Russo stated that the victim and his spouse “were behaving like any other couple on the train.”
“They were together and for some reason Milton Hamlin took offense.”
The March 1 attack is just one of several recent violent incidents on the New York City subway system, which have attracted significant media attention and led Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to deploy National Guard troops to patrol stations and check riders’ bags. The move has drawn intense criticism, and Hochul has since ordered members of the National Guard not to carry military-grade weapons while conducting bag searches.
