Two men committed 26 robberies and attempted robberies in Lower Manhattan between March and December 2022, with police saying they targeted people in bars who looked like they had money, The New York Times reports. Kenwood Allen, 34, and Sean Shirley, 36, would use drugs to subdue their victims before they came stumbling out and then threw them up against a wall. “They bumrushed them,” James Essig, chief of detectives at the New York Police Department, said Thursday. Five people died from the overdoses. Allen has been charged with 10 counts of second-degree murder and 17 counts of robbery and attempted robbery. Shirley, charged in the overdose deaths of two people, was arraigned Thursday.
Brian Rodkey, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said Shirley and Allen drugged the victims, “robbed them, and left them on the street, not caring whether they lived or died.” Victims included Kathryn Marie Gallagher, 35, a fashion designer whose pieces had been worn by Lady Gaga, the actress Laverne Cox and dancers of the New York City Ballet. Alexander Rudnitsky, a 25-year-old student at Rutgers University who lived in Yonkers, N.Y., was also killed. Rudnitsky was found on a street in the Bronx in the early morning of July 22. He was unconscious and rushed to a hospital where he was declared brain-dead. He was taken off ventilators about a week later.