Random Stabbing in Midtown; Steve Buscemi Attacker Sentenced
Koreatown suffered a knife attack, and Kips Bay attacks ended in justice.
Chelsea /
| 13 Apr 2025 | 11:21
Clifton Williams on the day he was charged in two assaults on May 8, 2024, one on actor Steve Buscemi and another on an Asian individual whose name was not released. He was sentenced on April 10 after pleading guilty. (
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Because it happened just two days after the horrific broken-bottle attack on costume designer Mae Berg in SoHo, another random stabbing—this one in Midtown—got less attention than it might have. The details are as follows:
On Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at approximately 12:31pm, police responded to a 911 call of a stabbing in the vicinity of West 32nd Street and Fifth Avenue, within the confines of the Midtown South Precinct.
This intersection is a “Koreatown” hot spot, with three of its corners dedicated to Korean commerce (two restaurants and the Koreatown shopping court), with the other being a CVS.
Upon arriving on the scene, cops were informed that an unidentified individual approached a 33-year-old male victim, pushed him to the ground, took out a knife, stabbed the victim in the head multiple times, and then forcibly removed currency from his pants pocket.
The sum extracted is reported to have been just $10.
EMS transported the victim to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue in stable condition, while the perpetrator vanished into the surrounding crowds—for now.
Once NYPD acquires surveillance video, and the perpetrator is recognized, it’s unlikely they will rest easy.
If anyone has information before then, they can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (for Spanish, dial 888-57-PISTA). You can also submit tips online at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (formerly Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
Justice for Steve Buscemi
The alleged East Side madman, Clifton Williams, 51, who randomly attacked two men in Kips Bay, one of them being the beloved actor Steve Buscemi, on May 8, 2024, was sentenced to six months in prison on April 10.
The assault upon Buscemi, who was sucker-punched in the face near a Starbucks at 393 Third Ave. and East 28th Street, occurred just 10 minutes after Williams had assaulted a 22-year-old Asian at Third Avenue and East 16th Street.
Buscemi was taken to Bellevue for treatment for his bruised, swollen, and bleeding left eye, while his assailant vanished.
A former firefighter with Engine 55 in Little Italy before acting became his career, Buscemi took the incident seriously. “[He] was another victim of a random act of violence in the city,” said his publicist after the attack. “He is OK and appreciates everyone’s well wishes, though incredibly sad that this has happened to him while also walking the streets of New York.”
It was Williams’s own volatile behavior that led to his arrest on May 17. Involved in a dispute over personal items at a homeless services facility in Chelsea, Williams went to the 10th Precinct to file a report. An attentive officer, recognizing Williams from a wanted poster, asked if he was that person. Williams admitted that he was.
Williams pled guilty to the two assaults on March 12. In addition to his six months in toils, he was also sentenced to five years’ probation and orders of protection against Buscemi and against his other victim.
Buscemi wasn’t present for the sentencing, but fans of a certain Italian-American subculture will recall that when his Sopranos character, Tony Blundetto, was shot to death by his cousin Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), the music playing was Van Morrison’s “Glad Tidings.”