A 27-year-old woman was forcibly grabbed between the legs inside the Jay Street subway station in downtown Brooklyn on the morning of Monday, October 12, and the person responsible is still on the loose. The attacker approached the woman around 8:40 a.m. inside the station before fleeing on foot to parts unknown, according to police.
NYPD Crime Stoppers detailed the attack in a wanted notice posted this week, writing that the victim “was approached by an unidentified individual who forcibly grabbed her between the legs” before the person ran off. The notice, shared by NYPD Crime Stoppers
, did not include a description of the suspect or specify which direction the person fled. No arrest has been announced in the case.
Investigators are asking anyone with information to come forward. Tipsters can direct message @NYPDTips or call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), and the agency is offering up to $3,500 for a tip that leads to an arrest and indictment.
A Pattern of Unsolved Transit Groping Cases
The Jay Street case echoes other unresolved forcible-touching investigations that have surfaced across the city this year. In July, police said they were seeking an individual tied to two separate Manhattan incidents, according to SILive. Those attacks, both reported to have happened on June 20, involved a 45-year-old woman followed and touched under her skirt near 10th Avenue and West 17th Street, and a 24-year-old woman pushed against a wall and groped near East 5th Street and Avenue C before the same unidentified person fled on foot in each instance, per the outlet's reporting.
The Jay Street station itself has been the site of at least one other high-profile search for a groping suspect. Gothamist previously reported that police were hunting a man caught on surveillance video forcing himself on a woman inside an elevator at the Jay Street-MetroTech station, an incident that reportedly happened just before 5 a.m. on November 22 and involved an unidentified 50-year-old woman. That suspect was described, according to Gothamist, as roughly 50 years old, 5 feet 11 inches tall, 220 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair. It is not known from available reporting whether that earlier case is connected to this week's wanted notice.
What the Law Says About Forcible Touching on Transit
New York's penal code includes a specific provision addressing sexual contact against passengers on public transit. Jury instructions published by the New York Courts describe forcible touching as intentionally subjecting another person to sexual contact without a legitimate purpose, for the purpose of sexual gratification and with intent to degrade or abuse the other person, while that person is a passenger on a bus, train, or subway car operated by an authorized transit agency. The instructions for the amended statutes under Penal Law Article 130 were updated effective September 1, 2024, according to the same court system.
Transit Crime Numbers Offer Some Context
The incident arrives amid a mixed picture for crime on New York's subways and buses this year. Major crime across the transit system was essentially flat through the middle of 2026, with 1,085 reported incidents compared with 1,093 over the same period in 2025, according to an analysis from Vital City. Within that total, transit robbery rose 9.6% and felony assault climbed 4.4%, while grand larceny fell 7.2%, the analysis found. Reported rapes on the transit system dropped from six in 2025 to three in 2026, per the same report, even as citywide major crime declined 5.9% compared with the first half of the prior year. Those figures reflect overall transit crime trends rather than forcible-touching cases specifically, and they do not speak to this particular investigation.
For now, the person who grabbed the 27-year-old woman at Jay Street remains unidentified, and no arrest has been made. Anyone with information is urged to contact NYPD Crime Stoppers through the channels listed above.
