Adam Klotz, a 37-year-old weatherman on Fox News, came to the defense of an elderly man who was being harassed and burned by a pack of vicious teens — and took a savage beating for his trouble.
Klotz got on the subway around 12:45 Sunday morning to head home after watching the Giants lose at a Manhattan bar. On the train, he saw that an elderly gentleman sitting nearby was being harassed by a pack of teens. “There’s a group of teens, and one of them’s lighting a joint, and just, with that lighter, they put it in the guy’s hair,” Klotz related during a Monday appearance on Fox & Friends. “And his hair went up — pffft! — like a matchbook.”
But of the 25 to 30 passengers in the car, Klotz was apparently the only one who was moved to defend the man. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, you can’t do that. That’s not cool,'” recounted the manly meteorologist. “And that’s all it took. And then I was the focus of all their attention.”
The unruly kids began taunting him, and he attempted to move away from them. But they followed him to another car and punched him. He finally went to get off the train several stops later, but then, when the train doors opened, the whole group “bum-rushed” him.
“And suddenly, I’m on the ground. I’m getting kicked in the side, I’m getting wailed on. They’re like, ‘Put him to sleep, put him to sleep!’ They were trying to knock me out,” explained Klotz. “And then, once you’re unconscious and you’re getting punched, there’s like no defense.” Klotz used his arms to protect his head and wound up getting kicked and punched in the ribs and knee.
Related: Yet Another “Random” NYC Subway Attack: Healthcare Worker Splashed in Face With Burning Liquid
The weatherman said no one tried to intervene as the beatdown was in progress, though people were quick to help once the rabid pack moved on. He said he “gets it,” though — “Look what happens when you step up for somebody. I tried to step up for somebody and this is what just happened to me. Why would anybody want to do this to themselves?”
Klotz estimated the gang numbered seven or eight kids between 15 and 17 years of age. The NYPD quickly nabbed three of them — and just as quickly released them to their parents without filing charges.
When asked how the lack of consequences for his assailants made him feel, Klotz said, “I want there to be something done. It’s more like, why is the weather guy on the train trying to stop crime in the middle of the night? Like, where is Eric Adams? Where’s the city? Why am I doing this? Why is it up to me?”
Klotz is clearly in considerable pain in a video he posted to Instagram in the aftermath of the attack. In the video, he claims he was beaten by “children.”
“Where are the parents?” Klotz demands rhetorically between sobs of cynical laughter. “God … don’t — don’t — don’t let your kids come beat me up in the middle of the night again, please. Parents! Watch your children.”
On Fox & Friends, Klotz vented his frustration that all the consequences of the assault will fall on him, the victim, who must recover from injuries and pay a deductible out-of-pocket for his hospitalization, while neither the thugs who beat him nor their parents will go to jail or pay a dime. He is currently considering filing a criminal complaint but is hesitant to push for punishment for the youths, for what he sees as systemic failures.
Klotz’s instinct to protect children’s futures is admirable. When asked by Fox News host Steve Doocy if he would file a complaint, which would allow the city to consider whether to charge the hooligans, the meteorologist hesitated before answering, “I don’t know. I want — I want someone to be held responsible, but really what I want is some sort of change. I don’t want this to happen to somebody else, and I don’t think necessarily, just, these kids getting in trouble — like, where’s the structural change?” Klotz called on Mayor Adams to put more cops in the subways.
“I would love if some sort of change happened out of this,” he said.
Unfortunately, in New York State and NYC’s consequence-free gangstas’ paradise, nothing is going to change any time soon. Why would it?
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