Video has emerged of the moment former New York Governor David Paterson and his Guardian Angel stepson were punched and kicked in a fight with a gang on the city’s Upper East Side.
Three children and two adults have been charged with assault after the pair were left bloodied and bruised by youths they had earlier spotted trying to climb a fire escape.
The footage shows Anthony Sliwa, 20, repeatedly kicked in the back as he lies helplessly on the ground while his 70-year-old near-blind stepdad tries to haul the attackers away, eventually flinging one to the ground.
Sliwa, the natural son of Guardian Angles founder Curtis Sliwa, required five stitches in hospital for a split lip, while Paterson was checked over after being punched in the back of the head.
‘When they were insulting him and then starting to fight him, he didn’t back down,’ Paterson said of his stepson. ‘And I think that took a lot of courage.’
David Paterson, the first black Governor of New York State, was with stepson Anthony Sliwa when the pair were punched and kicked in what police said was a ‘gang attack’
A diner filmed the kicks flying in as the 20-year-old lay helplessly on the ground
The state’s first black governor said the pair were walking a dog outside Sliwa’s apartment block early on Friday evening when they saw a group of youths attempting to climb a fire escape on the building next to a mosque.
Sliwa warned them they could hurt themselves and said he would call the police if they did not stop.
At 8.30pm they stumbled across the group again outside a McDonalds restaurant just off the nearby East 97th Street.
Paterson said they got into an argument with the gang before two of them attacked the pair.
‘He was holding off as many other people as he could, but then it became four-to-one, five-to-one, six-to-one, and he was knocked to the ground and dazed by the experience,’ he explained.
‘I got punched in the face a couple times. I got punched on the shoulder.
‘But the person who punched me on the shoulder, I threw them against the McDonalds window myself.’
As the fight broke out, two adults who prosecutors say have no connection to the youths ‘took it upon themselves to intervene’.
New York City Housing Authority employees Travor Nurse, 40 and Diamond Minter, 34, were arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
The video, which was seemingly filmed from inside the restaurant by a diner, shows Sliwa already on the ground locked in a wrestling hold with one of the youths.
A bond of $50,000 was set when Travor Nurse was arraigned on assault charges on Tuesday
Co-defendant Diamond Minter, 34, was freed on supervised release at the same hearing
The three teenagers allegedly involved in the attack
A woman, thought to be Minter, leans over the pairs and appears to grab and hold Sliwa’s arms as two other boys stomp on Sliwa’s back and deliver a series of running kicks.
One appears to accidentally kick his friend on the ground before spinning round and kicking Sliwa’s legs.
Paterson can be seen pushing one attacker away as more youths move in, hurling one to the ground before the attackers step back to reveal Sliwa roll over with blood pouring from his mouth.
Assistant DA Zachary Campbell told the court that Sliwa shoved Nurse into a doorway before exchanging blows with both Nurse and Minter.
Nurse allegedly then threw Sliwa to the ground, and two of the three boys, ages 12 and 13 — who have since been charged in Family Court — began kicking and stomping on him as Minter allegedly held back Sliwa’s arms while he struggled to defend himself.
The 20-second video ends before the point at which, the DA claims, Nurse started to walk away, only to turn back and send Paterson crashing to the ground with a punch to the back of the head.
He then swung another punch at Sliwa as the 20-year-old staggered to his feet.
Curtis Silwa, leader of vigilante group Guardian Angels and Anthony’s biological father, said that Paterson and his son had ‘stood their ground’.
‘David is blind so he couldn’t at first see what was going on, so Anthony had to guide him and then step in front of him and take a lot of the blows,’ he told Dailymail.com
‘He said the adults were the ones that were hitting the hardest.’
Nurse’s attorney, Jeff Chabrowe, told the Daily News that Sliwa was the primary assailant and that his client was attempting to come to the children’s aid.
‘My client arrived after the fact, when former Governor Paterson and Mr Sliwa were already in a confrontation with some juveniles, and was trying to act as a peacemaker when Mr Sliwa attacked him,’ he explained.
He said that Paterson had boasted in a radio interview of Sliwa’s black belt in ju-jitsu and admitted that Sliwa had slammed one of the youths headfirst into a window.
Police released CCTV footage of the attackers – three teens and an adult man and woman – to help track them down
Silwa said his son, who was trained in martial arts by the Guardian Angels, told him ‘I did what I had to do, Dad’ when they spoke on Saturday morning
Two of the youths – aged 12 and 13 – appeared in court on Sunday charged with gang assault after being surrendered to the police by their parents on Saturday night.
Another teenager handed himself in but has not been charged.
Judge Pamela Goldsmith set Nurse’s bail at $50,000 and freed Minter on supervised release at their hearing on Tuesday.
‘They jumped in,’ NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said on Tuesday.
‘They seemed to want to insert themselves into the assault.
‘It was like a melee. They kept circling each other. Getting knocked down. Getting back up.’
Nurse and Minter have both denied the charges, and Chabrowe said his client would prove his innocence.
‘I’m confident that after further investigation, the DA’s office will certainly see this and we look forward to clearing his name.’
