Anti-gay subway attacker pleads guilty after fracturing woman’s spine

Allasheed Allah (inset) plead guilty to one count of third-degree assault as a hate crime. Inset photo courtesy of the NYPD. Photo via the MTA.

By Victoria Merlino

The Manhattan man who hurled homophobic insults and fractured a 20-year-old woman’s spine after seeing her kiss a female friend on the cheek on a Queens E train pleaded guilty to one count of third-degree assault as a hate crime. 

Allasheed Allah, 54, approached the woman at the 71st Avenue Subway Station in Forest Hills on Nov. 20, 2018, after seeing the victim kiss her female friend on the cheek. He yelled out, “Kiss her again you d**e b***h!” and then followed the two as they left the train, according to the charges.

Allah then struck the victim once in the head and chest, and shoved her into a nearby pole, causing her to hit the pole and the floor. Though she sustained injuries to her head and back, the victim has made a recovery. 

When questioned by police, Allah said he pushed the victim because she was “disrespecting me with all that gay (expletive).”

“In pleading guilty, the defendant has admitted to attacking a woman solely based on his belief that she was gay,” Acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan said in a statement. “This kind of hate-inspired assault is intolerable and we won’t stand for it here in Queens County — the most diverse county in the country. The defendant will go to prison as a result of this vicious attack. The victim, I am happy to say, has recovered and hopefully will be able to put this horrible incident behind her forever.”

Allah is set to receive one to three years in prison, which will be determined by Queens Criminal Court Judge Mary Bejarano.

 A total of 290 hate crimes were reported across the city as of Sept. 1, 2019, up from 205 reported hate crimes as of the same time last year, which is over a 41 percent increase from last year.

Queens has seen several high-profile acts of hate in the last year, including the two gay men claiming they were assaulted and called slurs in a Jackson Heights restaraunt and aQueens man allegedly attacking and yelling a slur at two gay men leaving a bar, leaving them with broken bones.