On a Monday morning in Greenwich Village, a 20-year-old NYU student did what thousands of young people do every day in New York City.
She put on her headphones, slung on her backpack, and walked to her 9:30 a.m. class.
Minutes later, according to multiple reports, she was on the sidewalk in shock, thrown to the ground by a stranger with a violent past and a rap sheet that just keeps getting longer.
A Morning Walk To Class Turns Violent
Eyewitness News reporter Chantee Lans says the attack happened in broad daylight near NYU, around 9:30 a.m., on Broadway in Greenwich Village.
Surveillance video, described by Lans, shows Amelia Lewis walking down the street when a man approaches from behind, winds up, hits her on her backside, then hits her again before walking off.
Lewis later told podcast listeners and interviewers that the stranger didn’t just hit her.
She says he grabbed her hair and “violently and forcefully” threw her to the ground, all without a word, and without any prior contact.
Lans reports that Lewis immediately reported the attack to police.
A good Samaritan helped her call 911, and several women on the sidewalk rushed over to help lift her off the ground and make sure she wasn’t alone.
Lewis has called it “the scariest experience” of her life.
Looking at the video and hearing her describe it, it’s hard to argue with that.
A Suspect With A Long And Disturbing Record
The man arrested in the case, according to Chantee Lans, is 45-year-old James Rizzo, a homeless level 2 sex offender with 16 prior arrests.
Lans says Rizzo was released from state prison in September after serving two years on a persistent sexual abuse conviction.
Court records cited by Lans show that in December 2023, Rizzo allegedly groped a 33-year-old woman’s breast on Greene Street in the Village and asked her, “Oh, you want more?”
He has also been charged in the past with attempted murder for beating and stabbing a man in Brooklyn back in 1997, when he was 17.
ABC7NY and Lans report that Rizzo’s recent record goes beyond this one NYU attack.
He is also accused of burglary on four separate occasions in a building where he was later found sleeping, as well as assaulting a 68-year-old woman on Thanksgiving, shoving her so hard she fell into a building and needed six stitches.
Fox News correspondent Alexis McAdams told viewers that Rizzo has been arrested “16 times and counting,” and described him as someone who “has really been racking them up” but was still out on the streets.
McAdams emphasized that he was only recently released, yet was already being tied to multiple new crimes.
If you step back, the pattern is obvious.
You have a man with a violent record, a recent sex-abuse conviction, prior serious charges, mental health issues, and failures to report to parole – and he’s still wandering around a college neighborhood in the middle of the day.
That’s not just bad luck. That’s a system choice.
‘I Should Not Be Scared’ – Student Speaks Out
In her interview with Fox News, Amelia Lewis didn’t just describe the attack.
She talked about how wrong it feels to be this afraid just walking to class.
“I am a student at NYU. I should not be scared to be walking the street to go to my 9:30 a.m. class,” Lewis said in the clip shared by McAdams.
She called men like her attacker “disgusting” and said they “should not be able to be walking around the street freely targeting girls and doing this.”
Lewis went further and connected her fear to politics and policy.
“It shows you really need to reflect who you are voting for and supporting right now,” she said. “Because New York needs help and we are just not getting the help we need.”
On The Megyn Kelly Show, Lewis gave more detail about the moment of the attack.
She told host Megyn Kelly that it was her first day back from Thanksgiving, around 9:20 a.m., and she was in a good mood, crossing the street near Waverly Place when she suddenly felt an “extremely painful and hard whack” to her butt.
She turned around and saw a middle-aged man, then felt him grab her hair and slam her to the ground.
“I had no idea” I was in danger, she said, explaining that he had targeted her from behind. “There was no way I could have seen it.”
Lewis also made it clear this wasn’t some isolated freak event.
She told Kelly she’s seen story after story of women in New York being attacked – including reports of a woman set on fire – and wanted to use her voice to raise awareness for other young women.
Her basic message is simple and hard to dismiss: college students shouldn’t have to live like this, constantly looking over their shoulders in what is supposed to be one of the world’s great cities.
Social Media, Surveillance And A Swift Arrest
One unusual part of this story is how fast the suspect was caught – and who helped make that happen.
Megyn Kelly says she first heard about the assault when a friend sent her Lewis’s TikTok video.
Kelly encouraged Lewis to make an X (Twitter) account so the video could reach a bigger audience, then Kelly reposted it, tagged NYPD leadership, and asked for help identifying the attacker.
Kelly told her audience that the “X army went to work.”
The clip of the assault went viral, with users sharing the video and calling for an arrest.
Meanwhile, Lewis’s friend and fellow NYU student Summer Armstrong did some old-school legwork.
Armstrong told Kelly she marched into Warehouse Wine & Spirits on Broadway and asked staff to check their surveillance cameras around the time of the attack.
“They found it,” Armstrong said.
The clear footage of the attack – showing Rizzo running up behind Lewis, striking her, and then throwing her down – became a key piece of evidence and helped prove exactly what happened.
Lewis told Kelly that NYPD officers were already aware of a man with a “blue towel” around his neck causing trouble, but she believes the combination of social media pressure, viral video, and that surveillance footage pushed the case forward much faster.
By Tuesday, Lans and ABC7NY report, NYPD officers responded to a call about a man sleeping in a building near Washington Square Park, recognized Rizzo, and arrested him.
He was charged with persistent sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, and several burglary counts, and later remanded by a judge and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, according to Chantee Lans’s written report.
NYU spokesperson John Beckman said the university is “pleased that a suspect has been apprehended” and that they take the incident “very seriously,” offering support to Lewis and working with police.
It’s a rare case where a victim’s quick reporting, friends’ initiative, and a media megaphone all lined up in her favor.
You can’t help but wonder how many other victims never get that combination – and never see their attackers caught.
Crime Stats, Public Fear And A System Under Fire
On Fox News, anchor Dana Perino pointed out that some categories of New York City crime are statistically down compared to last year.
She said numbers show decreases in murders, robberies, and burglaries in the latest monthly comparisons.
But Perino also noted that numbers don’t erase how people feel when they watch Lewis’s video or hear stories of repeat offenders roaming free.
“There is still the feeling of unease in the city,” she said, because “you have people on the street that have long rap sheets that are violent people and they are just out there.”
Fox anchor Martha MacCallum argued that people like Rizzo “need to be taken off the streets,” especially if they have many prior offenses “along the same lines.”
She pointed to past efforts by former Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell to expand involuntary commitment laws for people who are clearly not safe to be on the street.
MacCallum said that if someone isn’t safe outside, “they need to be in an institution,” and suggested that resistance to those policies has real consequences for victims like Lewis.
She also questioned what New York’s new leadership will do when confronted with yet another violent case involving a man with a thick history of arrests and mental illness.
There’s an uncomfortable truth here.
You can have better stats on paper and still have women getting blindsided on sidewalks by men who should have been locked up or in treatment long ago.
What This Case Says About Safety In The City
Taken together, the reporting from Chantee Lans, Alexis McAdams, and Megyn Kelly paints a picture that’s bigger than one attack.
You have a young woman doing everything “right” – walking in daylight, near campus, in a busy neighborhood – and it still wasn’t enough to protect her.
You have an alleged attacker with decades of serious charges, a known sexual history, mental health issues, and a pattern of violence against women and seniors, still out in public until social media and viral video forced action.
You have a city where officials say crime is down, but students and residents say they don’t feel safer.
Lewis’s words cut through all of that.
“I should not be scared to be walking the street to go to my 9:30 a.m. class,” she said.
She’s right.
If a city can’t guarantee at least a reasonable level of safety for a 20-year-old walking to school in daylight, then something in that system is deeply off – whether you blame bail laws, parole decisions, mental health policies, or political priorities.
The heroes in this story are the bystanders who helped, the friend who hunted for video, and a young woman who refused to stay quiet.
The villain is not just the man on the tape, but the revolving door that let him get close to her again and again.
New Yorkers are used to being tough.
But asking college students to accept this level of fear as the price of admission to their own campus isn’t toughness. It’s failure.
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
