A Fox News meteorologist claims he was severely beaten by a group of teens on the New York City Subway while heading home late after watching the New York Giants game over the weekend.
In an Instagram video posted after the attack on Sunday morning, Adam Klotz, 37, audibly winces from the lingering pain.
“My side – don’t laugh – my side is so much worse than my face,” he says directly to the camera, several bruises visible while laying down in bed and asking where his assailants’ parents were that night.
Klotz goes on to recount how he was coming back from a bar after the divisional game, during which the Giants lost in a blowout to the Philadelphia Eagles, when he saw “an older gentleman” who “was being hassled” by a group of “seven or eight teens” on the subway.
“I was like, ‘Yo, guys, cut that out,’” he said. “And they decided, ‘All right, if he’s not going to get it, you’re going to get it.’ And boy did they give it to me. They had me on the ground. My ribs are all bruised up, too. They got their hits in. But that guy got out of there. He’s fine.”
According to New York City Fox station WNYW, Klotz also told the teenagers to stop smoking what appeared to be marijuana. And, he said, they were lighting the older man’s hair on fire.
The incident occurred on a downtown 1 train approaching the subway station at 18th St. and 7th Ave. in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.
“I got really beat down and no one else spoke up,” Klotz told the station. “A lot of people just watched me get beat down. They were quick to help me as soon as the beatdown was over but no one wanted to step in and stop me from getting stomped on. You know, I guess I get it. No one wants to go through that because they just watch me try it and it didn’t work out.”
In a Monday appearance on Fox & Friends, Klotz said he walked to a different subway car but the teens followed him.
“I get off that train after taking a punch,” the weatherman said. “The whole group, the doors open again at another stop, the whole group just comes and bum rushes me, and suddenly I’m like, on the ground. I’m getting kicked in the side. I’m getting wailed on. They were trying to knock me out, and then once you’re unconscious, and you’re getting punched like there’s no defense, so I was just doing my absolute best to cover my head.”
It is presently unclear how many of the teens from the group took part in the violence. In his Instagram video, he also refers to being hurt by “five or six children.” The local Fox affiliate says Klotz said four of the teenagers attacked him.
The NYPD later arrested three of the teens, a 17-year-old and two 15-year-olds, according to CBS News.
“Juvenile reports were prepared, and their parents were called to pick them up,” an anonymous source with the NYPD told the New York Post.
Klotz was treated at Bellevue hospital for injuries to his face and ribs. He said the incident won’t dissuade him from using the subway in the future but called out Mayor Eric Adams for a lack of safety and attention to “structural things” on the Big Apple’s most widely-used form of transportation.
“Why is the weather guy on the train trying to stop crime in the middle of the night?” he said on Fox News. “Like, where is Eric Adams? Where’s the city? Why am I doing this? Why is it up to me?”
According to New York City statistics released earlier this month, transit crimes rose 4.6 percent from 2021 through 2022.