Richard Williams served his country in the United States Air Force. He survived decades of life, beat cancer, and made it to 83 years old. Then New York City’s sanctuary policies put a four-time-deported illegal alien on the same subway platform as him — and he never came home.
Williams died this week from injuries he sustained on March 8, when Bairon Posada-Hernandez allegedly shoved him and a 30-year-old bystander onto the tracks at the Lexington Avenue–63rd Street station in Manhattan. Bystanders managed to pull both men off the tracks before an oncoming train hit them. Williams was hospitalized with serious injuries. He did not recover.
Posada-Hernandez is a Honduran national who had been deported from the United States four times. He had 15 prior charges on his record — including simple assault, domestic violence, obstruction of police, weapons possession, drug possession, and aggravated assault.
He was here anyway. Because New York City is a sanctuary city.
Following Williams’ death, prosecutors upgraded the charges against Posada-Hernandez to second-degree murder. That’s cold comfort for a family that lost a grandfather, a veteran, and a man who by every account had earned the right to ride a subway in peace.
This is what sanctuary policies produce. Not abstract policy disagreements — actual, preventable deaths. A man deported four times, with a violent record stretching across multiple categories of crime, was allowed to remain in America’s largest city because local officials decided their political stance on immigration mattered more than public safety.
Richard Williams survived a fire. He beat cancer. He served his country.
He was killed by a policy decision.
Posada-Hernandez is now facing murder charges. The politicians who made New York a sanctuary city are not.