New York City‘s new mayor took charge on Saturday but the city’s crime wave appears to be continuing into 2022 as a woman in her 40s became the first homicide of the year.
The woman, who has not been identified, was found lying on the sidewalk in Astoria, Queens, just before 9pm on Saturday.
She had been stabbed multiple times. The woman later died at Astoria General Hospital.
No witnesses or suspects have been identified in the killing.
A woman was found stabbed to death near a diner in Queens on New Year’s Day, making it the first known murder of 2022
The murder happened around 9pm near 21st Street and Broadway by the Bel Aire Diner in Astoria
Crime scene tape is seen spread across are where the woman’s body was found
The woman was found with multiple stab wounds on the street at 21st Street and Broadway in Astoria
The woman was taken to hospital in cardiac arrest where she later died
The first New York murder of the year continues a growing and worry trend in the city which in 2021 saw 485 murders, an increase of 4 percent on 468 recorded in 2020.
The city has been facing a rise in violent crime, particularly in shootings and killings, that is part of a national trend in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Crime will a major focus of New York City’s new mayor, Eric Adams, whose first day on the job was Saturday.
Adams, 61, a former New York City police captain, began his first day as mayor by calling 911 to report two men fighting, and later in the day promised to aggressively go after violent crime while holding a news conference about a police officer who was shot and injured hours earlier.
Adams and his new police commissioner, Keechant Sewel, held an afternoon news conference outside a hospital after a police officer was shot Saturday while sleeping in his vehicle in a precinct parking lot between shifts. The officer is expected to fully recover.
The woman was found stabbed to death in Queens on Saturday night
There were 485 murders in New York City during 2021. This is the first one to happen in 2022
The victim’s name and age have not been released. Police also didn’t release information regarding the possible motive or circumstances behind the attack
The circumstances surrounding the stabbing are unknown. Pictured, the scene of the crime
Murders have gone up in New York City each of the last three years, with numbers hitting a 10-year high in 2021
Adams declared that New York is ‘not going to be a city of violence.’
‘I am clear on my mission to aggressively go after those who are carrying violent weapons in our city,’ he said.
Adams rode the subway from his Brooklyn brownstone to City Hall for his first day on the job. Adams chatted with New Yorkers and a throng of reporters following him. While waiting for the train, he called 911 to report a fight after witnessing two men tussling near the subway station.
Hours earlier, as confetti continued to drift across Times Square, Adams recited his oath of office. Associate Justice Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix of the state Supreme Court’s appellate division swore Adams in as he placed one hand on a family Bible and his other held a photograph of his mother, Dorothy, who died in 2020.
After canceling initial plans to be sworn into office at a Brooklyn theater, Adams said Saturday that he chose to hold his inauguration ceremony at the scene of the New Year’s Eve ball drop to show that the city was open and alive and ‘that New York can and should be the center of the universe again.’
While surrounded by media, New York City Mayor Eric Adams greets a commuter as he waits for the subway to City Hall on his first day in office in New York on Saturday
New York City Mayor Eric Adams greets some pedestrians as he makes his way to City Hall on his first day in office in New York on Saturday
The pandemic had put the city through ‘two years of continuous crisis,’ Adams said, ‘and that insults our very nature as New Yorkers.’
‘There’s one thing that everyone knows about New Yorkers: We don´t like anyone telling us what to do,’ he said.
The city’s municipal workforce is required to be vaccinated, as is anyone trying to dine indoors, see a show, work out at a gym or attend a conference. But New York City has also newly required employees in the private sector to get their shots, the most sweeping mandate of any state or big city and a policy Adams said he will preserve.
Even without a mandated shutdown, the city is grappling with de facto closures because of widespread COVID-19 infections.
Several subway lines were suspended because positive test results among transit workers left too few staffers to run regular trains. Some entertainment performances have been canceled, and restaurants and bars are crunched as workers test positive.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, center, speaks during a cabinet meeting on his first day in office in New York on Saturday
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, center, speaks during a cabinet meeting
Adams said he and advisers are studying whether to expand vaccine mandates and plan to distribute face masks and rapid tests, as well as introduce a color-coded system alerting New Yorkers to the current threat level.
While promising to be a man of action in the mayor’s office, Adams is at times an unconventional politician who is expected to put his own stamp on the role.
Adams, the former Brooklyn borough president, has struck a more business-friendly, moderate stance than his predecessor but describes himself as a practical and progressive mayor who will ‘get stuff done.’
He is the city’s second black mayor, after David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993, and the 110th mayor of New York City.
He held his first cabinet meeting Saturday morning. Later in the afternoon, he sought to send a powerful symbol of his own resiliency by visiting a police precinct in Queens where he was beaten by officers when he was a teenager.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams calls the police while keeping his eye on a fight in the street while waiting for the subway to City Hall in New York. Adams called to report an assault in progress
New York City Mayor Eric Adams hugs commuter Pauline Munemya as he rides the subway to City Hall on his first day in office in New York on Saturday
‘Today is an important moment for me as I finally leave the demon right here on these streets, no longer living the trauma I experienced in this precinct, but back as the mayor in charge of the entire police department,’ he said.
Adams said he and his new police commissioner will show officers they have their backs but will hold them to a high standard and not allow abusive officers to remain above the ranks.
While the new mayor has pledged to keep the city open and stave off any return to shutdowns, he is taking the helm of a city that has seen subway lines, restaurants and even urgent care centers temporarily close because of staffing shortages driven by the virus.
Adams said this week that he plans to keep in place many of the policies of outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, including vaccine mandates that are among the strictest in the nation.
In his Saturday address, Adams also said he would take a ‘radically practical’ approach to improving the city´s government that involves not just ‘grand plans and proposals,’ but also ‘weeding out waste and eliminating the inefficiencies.’