A brutal, hammer-wielding attacker accused of viciously beating a 57-year-old woman as she entered a Queens subway station and fracturing her skull was convicted on multiple charges for the disturbing 2022 incident, the district attorney said. William Blount was found guilty of first-degree assau lt, robbery and other charges following a six-week trial, Queens DA Melinda Katz said Thursday. He was responsible for kicking the victim, Nina Rothschild, down the stairs of the Queens Plaza subway station in Long Island City and bludgeoning her over the head with a hammer in a violent robbery. “This defendant repeatedly bashed an innocent straphanger in the head with a hammer. The victim – who was simply trying to use the subway as millions of New Yorkers do every day – suffered multiple skull fractures,” said Katz. NYC Subway Mar 29, 2022 NYC Woman Who Had Skull Fractured in Subway Hammer Attack Vividly Recounts Horror Queens Feb 27, 2022 Police Make Arrest in Hammer-Wielding Subway Attack That Fractured Woman's Skull Queens Feb 25, 2022 Hammer-Wielding Subway Attacker Fractures Woman's Skull, Kicks Her Down Stairs: Official The gruesome attack on Feb. 24, 2022, that left Rothschild hospitalized with critical injuries was captured on surveillance video. She was seen walking down the stairs as Blount, who was walking with a black cane, approached her from behind, prosecutors said. “I kept yelling stop, stop, stop, which of course was completely and utterly useless,” Rothschild said in an exclusive interview with NBC New York a month after the attack. “I started calling ‘Help, help, help, help!’ And fortunately two NYPD officers who were I think on the lower platform down by the trains came up.” He kicked her down the stairs and hit her in the head more than a dozen times with a hammer before taking off. Blount, 60, took her purse, which had some cash, two phones, two rings and credit and debit cards. Rothschild, a researcher with New York City’s health department, was taken to the hospital where she was treated for multiple skull fractures. She had a bilateral craniectomy to repair her skull with titanium mesh, prosecutors said. “Fortunately or unfortunately, I remember basically the entire thing from start to finish,” Rothschild told NBC New York. “I remember starting to go down the subway steps and feeling this blow to my head, which I initially thought was a baseball bat.” Blount was arrested three days after the attack. A hammer, cane and Rothschild’s tote bag were found when a search warrant was executed at a home on William Street in Manhattan that belonged to a relative of Blount, which was also his last known residence. Attorney information for Blount was not immediately available. He faces up to 25 years to life in prison at sentencing, scheduled for May 7. Blount previously had a lengthy criminal record, including a jail escape attempt that left him with two broken ankles, law enforcement officials said. His record includes kidnappings, robberies and drug crimes in New York City and South Carolina dating to the early 1980s. He was sentenced to 20 years for kidnapping, 15 years for burglary and five years (to run concurrently) for committing a crime of violence with a firearm in a case in which he and his brother broke into a Bojangles in South Carolina in 2000 and kidnapped two employees, making one open the safe. Blount tried to escape while serving that sentence, South Carolina police say. It happened during the murder of a guard by other inmates amid a larger escape plot on Sept. 17, 2000. Blount tried to join the jailbreak, jumping from the prison roof and breaking both his ankles in the process. He was caught, and got hit with a conspiracy to escape charge on top of the other crimes for which he was jailed. NBC New York’s Melissa Russo, Jonathan Dienst and Courtney Copenhagen contributed to this report. ...read more read less