In the latest episode of seemingly out of control violent crime in the Big Apple, Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz was the victim of a brutal attack while riding the subway over the weekend, as the network itself reported.

Klotz explained in an Instagram post that the incident was sparked by his decision to intervene on behalf of an older man who was being harassed by a group of teens, according to the Daily Mail.

Meteorologist attacked

According to Klotz, 37, the fracas occurred around 1:15 a.m. in the vicinity of the 18^th Street station near the 1 train, as he was on his way home from watching an NFL playoff game at a bar.

That is when he spotted a group he described as consisting of seven or eight teenagers bothering an “older gentleman,” having gone so far as to set his hair alight with a marijuana joint.

Klotz explained, “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.”

The well-known on-air personality continued, saying, “They had me on the ground, my ribs are all kinds of bruised up too. They got their hits in.”

In his video message, Klotz was sporting red and purple eyelids and other visible signs of the encounter, but he indicated that he had sought medical attention and received X-rays, adding, “I'm OK. This is all going to heal. So, it's all good.”

“Why am I doing this?”

Lamenting the fact that he was the only line of defense between the older subway patron and the gang of violent youth, Klotz said during a chat with Fox & Friends, “I want there to be something done. ...Why is the weather guy on the train trying to stop crime in the middle of the night?”

“Like, where is [New York City Mayor] Eric Adams? Where's the city? Why am I doing this? Why is it up to me?” wondered Klotz.

Pointing to the need for greater attention to be paid to rising crime on the subway system, Klotz said, “What I want is some sort of change. I don't want this to happen to somebody else, and I don't think necessarily just these kids getting in trouble, like where's the structural things? Like, put some cops down there.”

“I want Eric Adams to do something more long term so that this won't happen to somebody else, more than me just getting some sort of revenge in the short term,” Klotz concluded.

As far as bringing his assailants to at least some degree of justice, Klotz may wind up disappointed, as the New York Post reported that three of the teens were apprehended by law enforcement, but the rest managed to escape, and those who were stopped by police were ultimately released into the custody of their parents without charges being lodged.

Subway crime wave continues

The attack on Klotz is emblematic of an alarming increase in crime on the New York City subway system, a phenomenon which has caused widespread anxiety and a drop in ridership in recent months.

As Bloomberg recently noted, criminal incidents in the subway system jumped 30% in 2022 as compared to the preceding year, surpassing the overall 22% increase seen in major crimes citywide.

Those startling figures came even as the city deployed thousands of extra police patrols to the transit system, and, as leaders including Adams have already noted, the additional assistance will not continue indefinitely.

“Once we stabilize that, we're going to right-size,” Adams declared earlier this month. “You're going to see a normalizing of the number of people who are there.”

Michael Kemper, chief of transit with the NYPD, argued that the enhanced patrols have succeeded in lowering major crime rates in the system during the period between October through December, saying, “This plan is paying dividends.”

While municipal leaders in the Big Apple continue to project confidence in their ability to tamp down the rise in violent transit crimes, another headline-grabbing attack occurred last week when a man was pushed onto the tracks by an ex-convict at a station on the city's Upper West Side, suffering injuries that ultimately proved fatal.