Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz revealed that he was violently attacked early Sunday morning by a group of “seven or eight teens” during a New York City subway ride, leaving him with bruised ribs, black eyes, and cuts across his face.
Klotz, who has been with the network since 2017, posted two videos to his Instagram account on Sunday morning detailing the altercation and aftermath. Additionally, he said that law enforcement officers had apprehended at least a couple of the attackers.
“Hear me out, though: you should see the other guy,” Klotz quipped in the first video while unveiling his discolored face. “My side—oh, don’t laugh—my side is so much worse than my face.”
The weatherman went on to note that the “other guy” was actually “five or six children” before wondering aloud “where are the parents” and asking them not to “let your kids beat up people in the middle of the night.”
Evoking a far more serious tone, Klotz posted another social media clip a few hours later in which he gave more details about the altercation.
“I feel like that last post seems like I wasn’t being serious. Like this wasn’t real,” he said while zooming the camera on his facial injuries. “But, yeah, coming home last night from watching the [New York] Giants game at a bar, on the subway, this older gentleman was being hassled by this group of seven or eight teens.”
Klotz continued: “And I was like, ‘Yo, guys, cut that out.’ And they decided, ‘Alright, he’s not gonna get it, then you’re going to get it!’ And boy, did they give it to me. They had me on the ground—my ribs are all kinds of bruised up too. They got their hits in!”
The meteorologist did note that the man who was initially being threatened by the group “got out of their fine” and the “cops grabbed a couple of these kids” following the attack.
According to police sources who spoke with the New York Post, Klotz confronted the teens on the No. 1 train around 1:15 a.m. The teens fled the train at the 18th Street stop and three of them were detained by police soon after.
In the end, per a New York Police Department representative, the three teenagers—aged 15 through 17—were soon released from custody.
“Juvenile reports were prepared, and their parents were called to pick them up,” the NYPD rep said.
“I got a couple of X-rays. I’m okay. This is all going to heal,” Klotz stated in the second video, sarcastically adding: “It’s all good! You know what I mean? New York City! New York City! Ahh, what a place. The Big Apple!”
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Klotz declined to comment when reached by The Daily Beast.
Fox News, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has recently used the city’s uptick in violent crime to criticize Democratic politicians and liberal criminal justice policies, describing New York as a “hellhole.” While the network’s overall crime coverage noticeably dropped immediately after last year’s midterm elections, Fox News has continued to focus intently on the “crime crisis” in the nation’s largest city.
At the same time, Fox News personalities have been directly impacted by urban violence. Prior to the attack on Klotz, Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell’s younger brother was shot and killed in Chicago last summer.
Read more at The Daily Beast.