Earlier this week, a man was arrested after he was captured on video seemingly attempting to abduct a woman off of the subway. Sonny Alloway was charged with unlawful imprisonment for the incident—but Alloway now claims that it was all a big misunderstanding, and he was just trying to help the woman.
"This is what happened," Alloway explained in a widely-shared video. "She said, 'yo help me, help me.' I was like, yo what happened? She said, 'this guy is holding me hostage.'...I said, then get off the train. She was like, 'nah he's gonna beat me up.' So I said I'd scoop you off. So when I scooped her off, she started screaming, 'help help!'" He goes on to claim in the video that he didn't run away after the incident because he was trying to be a good Samaritan, and that people tried to "jump him" after the video went online.
Alloway told the Daily News a similar story. “I mean, let’s really think about that: I’m going to carry her from the train station over here, kicking and screaming, and no one is going to notice that?" Alloway asked rhetorically. “That’s usually what happens in the world. You just go with the video and you take it for what it is.”
The initial incident happened on a 6 train at the Morrison Avenue-Soundview station in the Bronx around 2:35 a.m. last Sunday. As you can see in the video below, Alloway tried to get the woman's attention while the person next to her slept, then literally carried her off the train. (In the video, there is no indication the woman was asking for him help.) The frightened and angry woman then ran back onto the train.
Alloway, 48, told the News that he has been attacked three separate times after the subway video went up online—including one incident in which he was punched and kicked on the street, which was captured on video.
A Bronx DA spokesperson said that they had "deferred prosecution pending further investigation by the police." An NYPD spokesperson told Gothamist that Alloway still faces the unlawful imprisonment charge.
In another video, Alloway allegedly was confronted by the woman and man from the original incident at the 125th Street station.