A ‘BRIEF’ HISTORY OF A CRIME
Punk found in undies was stripped by family of bus robbery victim
The video shocked the city: A man steps off a bus from Atlanta in Manhattan’s Chinatown and is immediately set upon by 13 attackers. They relentlessly punch, kick and slash him, even stripping off his clothes before leaving him bleeding in his underwear on the street.
Cops asked for the public’s help identifying and tracking down the cruel assailants. But now the suspects — who plan to turn themselves in to the NYPD on Friday — say they were just seeking justice.
They claim the victim, identified by police sources as 26-yearold ex-con Walter Ward of Brooklyn, robbed their relative at gunpoint during a terrifying hourslong ordeal on the bus, stealing his cell phones, jewelry and even the clothes he was wearing.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, Cassandra Nimmons, the 65-year-old grandmother of the 20-year-old man the family claims was robbed on the bus, said she received frantic text messages from her terrified grandson during the Jan. 22 ride.
“He’s a good kid. Everybody loves him,” she said of her grandson, declining to give his name but saying he has never been in trouble with the law. “He went to school for engineering and wants to be a music producer.”
Not long into the 15-hour ride, Nimmons said, Ward and an accomplice pulled a gun on her grandson and robbed him of a $1,400 coat, a $1,000 pair of Yeezy sneakers, an Apple watch, ear pods and two diamond earrings. They also snatched two cell phones he was using.
“The guy [Ward] said, ‘This is not personal. I have to feed my family. Give it up,’ ” recounted Nimmons.
“He gave everything,” Nimmons told The News. “He had a sweatsuit and they told him to take that off, too, and the sneakers. They left him there with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.”
Ward and his cohort threatened the grandson for hours as the bus made its way up the East Coast, according to Nimmons. He was terrified to report the gunpoint robbery to the driver or other passengers while the bus was in motion.
But when his robbers dozed off, he was able to whisper to another passenger through a chair to send a text message to Nimmons.
“I got a text from someone else’s number. It said, ‘I got robbed on the bus and they took everything, Don’t panic,’ ” Nimmons said.
As the robbers slept, the victim moved to the front of the bus and got another passenger to let him use a cell phone to call Nimmons.
“I’ve been robbed,” he told his grandmother. “They took everything ... I can’t talk too loud.”
Her grandson begged her not to call the cops out of fear Ward would get revenge, Nimmons said.
About 4 a.m., her grandson sent another text from a borrowed phone, telling her to have the family meet him at the Panda NY station in Chinatown.
When the bus made a rest stop,
the grandson was able to grab a pair of sweatpants from his luggage stowed under the bus.
At some point, Ward and the other alleged robber woke up and moved next to the victim at the front of the bus.
“If you call the cops, I have your ID and I’m going to kill your whole family,” Ward and his accomplice told him, according to Nimmons’ recounting.
“Don’t make it hot,” Ward added.
Through it all, the bus driver seemed completely unaware of what was happening.
But Nimmons said she overheard one of the robbers during a phone call with her grandson.
“Another person let my grandson call me and he was telling me what time the bus came in, and I heard [a robber] say, ‘Are you talking to your mom?’ And my grandson said said, ‘No, please calm down.’ ”
The phone then went dead, Nimmons said.
The victim’s relatives met the bus about 11:30 a.m. Friday morning at the station on Allen St. near Canal St.
Nimmons — who was finishing up a dialysis appointment and not present for the attack — said Ward was right behind her grandson as passengers exited the bus.
“The guy was right on his back, and they thought he was going to do something else,” Nimmons said.
The victim’s relatives — police believed it was a group of 13 people — surrounded Ward and attacked.
“There was a ringleader, this guy who was telling the other guys to strip him, what to do,” witness Jose Nunez, 50, told The News.
“He was doing crowd control, he was looking for cops, for people recording.”
“They were jumping on his head, soccer kicking his head,” Nunez added. “Literally, I don’t know how he got up. I thought they were gonna kill him.”
The crowd stripped off Ward’s pants, underwear and sneakers, and grabbed a wallet and phone he carried. Ward, badly bloodied, tried to flee to a nearby firehouse.
Finally cops arrived and Ward was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated and released.
The grandson’s family has hired lawyer Sanford Rubenstein and have the support of the Rev. Kevin McCall, a civil rights leader.
“The Police Department is portraying them [the family] as perpetrators instead of victims,” said McCall.
“This young man was robbed and menaced with a gun in his face. Through the grace of God he’s still alive. What if he had nobody meeting him at the bus stop? His family was defending him and themselves.”
No gun was recovered by police. “It’s unclear what happened to the gun,” McCall said.
The victim’s relatives involved in the fight plan to turn themselves in Friday to speak to 5th Precinct detectives — and file a criminal complaint for robbery against Ward. The News has not been able to reach Ward for comment.
“If in fact there’s a criminal charge, I would tell the district attorney, it should be dismissed,” Rubenstein said of potential charges against the grandson’s family.
Ward has a hefty number of prior arrests and ties to a Brooklyn gang, a police source said. He has an open shoplifting case in Brooklyn and was released from prison in 2017 after serving a stint for robbery.