NYC subway beating suspect Norton Blake was set FREE by cops after ‘hitting 60-year-old woman with her own cane 50 times’ – because the pair offered ‘conflicting accounts’

New York City police released the suspect accused of beating a 60-year-old woman with her own baton after questioning him at the scene of the horrific attack.

Norton Blake, 43, was named by NYPD officials as the only suspect in the attack on Laurell Reynolds, which took place early Friday at a Harlem subway station.

Officers questioned Blake but let him go without arresting him after he and Reynolds gave conflicting accounts of the attack. New York Post reported.

The way officers treated Blake at the scene is now under investigation, sources said. An NYPD spokesperson declined to comment when reached by DailyMail.com.

The victim Reynolds, who uses a walker, expressed outrage, telling the Post in a bedside interview, “They should have arrested him!”

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‘I don’t deserve that. Not at all, not at all… and I pray to God that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Reynolds said. “They need to keep that man off the street.”

It is unclear whether police viewed bystander video of the attack before or after they released Blake.

The video was filmed by a transportation worker, who called the city’s Rail Control Center, which in turn called 911, documenting the attack, officials said.

NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper named Blake the prime suspect in the attack at a news conference Tuesday.

Blake remained at large Tuesday night, a law enforcement source confirmed to DailyMail.com.

Within days of the attack, the two-minute clip of the assault went viral, sparking a video search for the man after he successfully fled before police arrived.

The attack occurred just before 3:30 a.m. Friday, as Reynolds — who lives in the Bronx — made his way through the subway station at 116 West and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

In comments to The New York PostReynolds’ daughter revealed she only learned of the attack after seeing the video online.

“Now I know,” recalls 41-year-old Lashanne Reese, also from the Bronx, after wondering why her mother never showed up to her apartment for a party she had on Saturday, after leaving her home. go home and change.

Of the poignant footage—which appeared to be filmed from a subway toll booth—she said, “I’m hurt, it hurts.”

“That man could have killed my mother,” she added, as her mother is hospitalized and believed to be in stable condition.

“You all did nothing. I have a problem with that.’

Blake has a laundry list of offenders ranging from drug possession and assault to trespassing and resisting arrest, but reportedly gave a false name to police on Friday.

“We’re looking for him, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be arrested and charged for that assault shortly,” Kemper assured reporters after revealing that Blake was their only suspect.

As to how the altercation went, the top agent said he and others believed the suspect and Reynolds had been arguing when the victim was walking up one of the station’s stairs.

“A witness[said]that they were arguing about something that may have fallen,” Kemper said, claiming it was still unclear whether the two knew each other.

“Maybe he helped her carry something up the stairs, and maybe something fell, and they got into a fight,” he theorized.

The dispute quickly spiraled into one of the most horrific attacks on the system in recent history, with Blake Reynolds reportedly punched in the head, abdomen, leg, arms, back and hands.

The beating — which began after Blake ripped the woman’s cane from her hands — continued as she fell to the ground, leaving thousands of people across the city and country in shock at its prolonged and relentless nature.

Law enforcement sources went on to tell the Post that while on the run, Blake is well known to the NYPD — and has previous arrests for drug possession, assault, trespass, resisting arrest, tampering with evidence and possession of stolen property.

In two of the crimes, the suspect punched other NYPD officers, insiders said: one in 2017 while resisting arrest and another in 2003, punching a cop in the face while off duty.

Reese told the Post she wasn’t sure why her mother was in Harlem at the time of the attack, complaining that no one on the platform stepped in to help when she was attacked.

“We are supposed to be a loving, caring community. It is community unity. If we put unity into it, we get a whole community,” Reese said.

“That they don’t . . . that’s why it’s happening everywhere,” she continued. “This is happening everywhere because there is no unity in our community.”

She tearfully said about the suspect: He needs help – No, he shouldn’t be on the street.

“He just attacked my mother and hit her with a stick. He doesn’t belong on the street.

Subway crime has been labeled one of the city’s biggest crises, and while statistics show that the number of public transit violations has fallen slightly, even Manhattan’s progressive district attorney Alvin Bragg said last month that he was afraid for his family when they took the subway into the city.

“I know the statistics that transit crime has gone down, but when one of my relatives gets on the train, I get a knot in my stomach too,” he said. FOX5 news when asked about the perception that the subway system is becoming increasingly unsafe.

“I live here, I raise my family here, so we have a lot more work to do,” he added.

Serious crime in the subway system fell 9.9 percent in July from a year ago city ​​statistics.