Teen shot on NYC subway platform recounts fight with mugger over Steve Madden bag 35%
By Rocco Parascandola53%
7/20/2026, 12:30:24 PM
Topics: Crime And Public Safety
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Self-Serving Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Optimism Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 20% saturation with 89 hits. Analysis detected 473 faulty-reasoning hits from 445 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 43% and a BS Rank of 35% (12,473 of 19,025 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 65.60% of the article peer group.
A teenager was shot on a Brooklyn subway platform fighting back against a mugger trying to steal her Steve Madden bag, police said Monday.
Ashley Nicastro, wounded by a bullet that entered her chest and exited her back, is back home after the Sunday night ordeal and proud she was able to prevent the attacker from taking her two necklaces, one with a nameplate of her name, the other with a locket with a picture of her grandmother who died of cancer several years ago.
“I’m glad I did it,” Nicastro, 18, told the Daily News.
“I don’t regret anything.”
Her brush with death happened 11:45 p.m. as she was waiting for a Flatbush-bound 2 train at the President St.-Medgar Evers College stop in Crown Heights, police said.
The suspect, whom she believes is in his 40s, came up to her and tried to grab her two necklaces.
“Then he tried for my bag,” said Nicastro, who was coming from her job at a nearby clothing store.
“Me and him were tussling as the train was coming.
He had a good grip on my bag.
Then the strap broke and he shot me.”
The purse snatcher fired one shot.
Nicastro was disappointed no fellow straphangers came to her aid as the crook was yelling, “Give me your bag!
Give me your necklaces.”
But as the train pulled in and passengers got off some came to her aid as the shooter fled the station with the bag, which contained her debit card and cell phone, she said.
NYPD cops rushed Nicastro to Kings County Hospital in stable condition.
Nicastro's bag was later found abandoned nearly two miles away on Pacific St. near Utica Ave. after investigators tracked the stolen cell phone, police said.
A bullet fragment was recovered by investigators at the scene.
The shooter has not been caught.
He was wearing a red Yankees cap, black shirt, black sneakers and a black face mask and was carrying a backpack, cops said.
Nicastro, who was taken home from the hospital Monday by her father and boyfriend, vividly remembers everything that happened.
“I felt like I was in a movie,” she said.
“I didn’t think that anything was real.
I thought I was in a dream.”
Nicastro was the ninth person shot this year in Crown Heights' 71st Precinct, according to NYPD stats, compared to three people by this time last year.
Citywide, the NYPD has seen historic lows in homicides and shootings this year, with 429 people shot through Sunday compared to 453 by the same point last year, a 5% dip.
Analysis
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