New year, new attack.
A Brooklyn man began his year in 2024 with a new approach to settling scores — by running over a sex worker in the middle of an intersection.
“I don’t regret it,” Kevin Morgan, 31 said after sending video of the attack to multiple people, according to officials. “This was a message to everybody. Not playing around this year.”
Two years later, Morgan was officially charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment after prosecutors said he deliberately accelerated into a 25-year-old woman with his car on New Year’s Day two years ago.
Prosecutors said Morgan lay in wait in his Jeep at the corner of Wortman and Alabama Aves. as the woman crossed the street just hours into the new year.
It was unclear why Morgan was zeroing in on the woman, but a female passenger in the car, who was recording the attack, helped him identify the target.
“Oh, there she go — she in the middle of the thing,” the passenger said. “Oh, perfect opportunity.”
The video then shows the red Jeep driving directly into the victim, officials said.
The video was found on an iPad seized from Morgan’s car during a traffic stop not long after the incident, officials said.
The victim was taken to Brookdale Hospital where she was treated and released.
The victim said she had also been assaulted by several people, but had no memory of being struck by the Jeep.
No one has been arrested for the alleged group assault, officials said.
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
FILE – Women appearing to entice passing drivers on Georgia Ave. near Stanley Ave. in East New York, Brooklyn, an area known as “Penn Track,” are pictured on June 4, 2023. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
“Targeting a vulnerable individual in a crosswalk is a cowardly act of extreme depravity that will not be tolerated in Brooklyn,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “We allege that the victim in this case was subjected to a terrifying, intentional assault that could have cost her life. Having reached historic milestones in public safety last year, we will not permit this kind of brazen violence to threaten the security of our streets.”
The section of East New York where the victim was attacked is known as “Penn Track,” a notorious hotspot for prostitution.
Gonzalez said the woman was engaging in sexual activity for money at the time.
Morgan was held on $50,000 cash bail, and ordered to return to court on March 4.
A Brooklyn DA spokesperson said it took two years to reach an indictment partly because federal prosecutors handled the case for nearly a year before transferring it — along with the iPad, with its key evidence — to the DA.
