He returned to a Queens shelter and casually dropped the clothes he wore during the brutal assault into the laundry—not realizing those same garments would soon point straight to him. Shelter workers spotted his face on an NYPD CrimeStoppers alert, and within two days, he was in handcuffs.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg described the attack as a nightmare that “uprooted her life.” The victim, left with catastrophic, permanent injuries—including paralysis—would never be the same.
“After the attack, Semrade callously fled, leaving the victim helpless on the platform,” Bragg said. “While nothing can undo the profound harm caused, I hope this sentence brings a measure of justice.”
The man—a delivery driver with no prior record—stood silent during sentencing, uttering not a single word.
In the years since that moment on the subway platform, the survivor, Ozsoy, has chronicled her excruciating journey. “My life changed in an instant,” she wrote, after a severe spinal cord injury shattered her world.
“When I woke up in the ICU after surgery, everything about my life felt uncertain.” Her words carry the weight of a stolen future—surgeries, therapy, and a long, dark road ahead.
But Ozsoy has clawed back pieces of her independence: the ability to use a computer, to return to her art. “Each of these steps represents many hours of therapy, patience, and hard work,” she revealed—a testament to a spirit that refuses to break.
