NYU shove victim Amelia Lewis’s friend helped pull viral video that got serial creep busted: ‘We need to catch this guy’
Amelia Lewis, a 20‑year‑old NYU student, was hit over the head and shoved on Monday morning in Lower Manhattan. A few weeks earlier, her good friend Summer Armstrong had survived a similar attack in May. Both women didn’t let the incidents go unnoticed. Instead, they rallied around one another, turned to the power of video evidence, and helped bring a serial predator to justice.
When Summer received Amelia’s frantic text, she was halfway through a lecture and felt a wave of nausea wash over her. “When I got Amelia’s text, I was in class and felt sick,” she told Sirius XM’s Megyn Kelly in an exclusive interview. “This also happened to me once, and I was lucky enough to have footage.” Summer has never had the luck of the first victim’s camera because, as she explained, “My assailant was never caught, but I knew footage is key…We need the footage, and we need to catch this guy.”
The footage that mattered was recorded by security cameras at a local liquor store on Broadway, a block from where the earlier assault took place. Summer ran to the monitors, filmed a FaceTime session with a friend who recalled seeing the suspect, and requested the store’s video for the exact time frame. The man, reportedly a former con named James Rizzo, was identified in the footage as a blue‑towel‑wearing individual who had already made headlines for other violent acts against women. The clip spread across social media, including a posted video by Kelly herself, and finally landed in the hands of the NYPD.
The banker‑turned-serial offender had a violent history: 16 prior arrests and a background of burglary, sexual assault, and “persistent sexual abuse” charges. He had just been released from a state prison last September after serving a two‑year term for sex assault following an earlier attempted murder charge when he was 17. That same cellmate, as court documents show, was convicted on a wide array of assault counts, including the attack on a 68‑year‑old retired professor and a runaway incident on Martha’s ring. Rizzo was arraigned on Wednesday night and faces further charges.
Amelia, who set up a tearful TikTok video detailing what happened, explained that her motivation was to draw attention to a broader trend. “I wanted to bring awareness to what’s been happening to young women in New York,” she said during the interview. “On my TikTok I say, ‘I never thought this would happen to me.’ But it’s happening all the time.” She hopes sharing her experience will give other girls a voice and a stronger sense of protection.
In many respects, the two coeds’ cooperation shows how LGBTQ and minority students in universities often lean on each other for support. They have shown that, with the right tools and a unified front, they can bring even the most hardened offenders to justice.
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