Knockout Game Resurfaces In New York City, Kyle Rogers Sure He Was Victim
A seemingly random New York City assault in the early hours of Sunday morning is being called the latest occurrence of the so-called “knockout game,” in which teenagers sucker-punch unsuspecting pedestrians, attempting to knock them out cold with a single shot.
This time, the person making the knockout game charge is the victim himself, 23-year-old Kyle Rogers of Rockville Center, New York. Rogers had just departed the Sweet and Vicious Bar at about 2:25 am Sunday, in New York City’s Bowery district, when an unidentified man raced up behind him and punched him on the side of the head, knocking him unconscious to the pavement.
Rogers never even saw his attacker.
The assailant then walked away at a casual, normal pace. Surveillance video appears to show another man at the scene, making his own video recording of the horrific assault.
The attack happened near the Bowery Mission in New York City, and workers at the Mission came to Rogers’ aide as he lay on the sidewalk. Rogers says he does not remember the attack. After leaving the bar, the next thing he recalls is waking up in an ambulance on the way to Bellevue Hospital.
His jaw was broken and is now wired shut from the New York City attack, which also left him with cuts on his face, probably from hitting the concrete as he collapsed.
“I had no defense at all,” Rogers said in a televised interview on New York City Channel 7 Thursday. “You shouldn’t have that fear always in the back of your head, oh someone’s going to come out nowhere and punch me.”
Rogers is certain he is a victim of the so-called knockout game.
“It’s cowardly, you know?” he said. “If you’re going to face me face to face, and punch me like that, that’s one thing. But to run up from behind me? It’s like, c’mon.”
New York City police Thursday released a surveillance video of the attack. The video was discovered by Rogers’ father and brother, who used Google Maps Street View to look for surveillance cameras in the area where the attack took place.
The video is contained in the following segment from a local news broadcast.
The very existence of the knockout game has derided as a myth, even by police officials, or at least not the alarming trend that it has been portrayed as in the media.
Most knockout game attacks that received wide publicity in recent months have involved young African-American men attacking lone white victims, leading some commentators to claim that a rising tide of racially motivated violent crime committed by blacks against whites is sweeping the nation.
But critics say that though the knockout game appears to exist, there is no evidence that knockout game incidents are becoming more frequent, or that it is solely perpetrated by blacks against whites.
The attack on Rogers was the first of two alleged knockout game attacks in New York City on Sunday, the second occurring when a woman was attacked on the street in Brooklyn.
