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UFC superfan still wants answers three years after nearly being murdered on NYC subway
LEVITTOWN, N.Y. — To say things are on the upswing at Bellmore Kickboxing Academy would be an understatement.
Dennis Bermudez is one of the top featherweights in the UFC, Ryan LaFlare is an underrated top prospect and Costas Philippou is coming off a highlight-reel knockout. That's not even mentioning perhaps the most high-profile guy at the gym right now: Chris Algieri, who has a date with a guy named Manny Pacquiao on Nov. 22 in Macao.
There's another man you'll see at Bellmore a few times a week. He's not an MMA fighter or anything like that. Joe Lozito is just a regular working stiff, a treasurer at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. But he has a story that will trump any of the ones told by his friends who make their living inside an Octagon or ring.
Lozito will never take the New York City subway and not shudder after the events of Feb. 12, 2011 -- the day he was nearly murdered by a knife-wielding mad man, who had killed four others and was set on Lozito as his next victim.
Except Lozito didn't die that day. The UFC superfan hit the sloppiest and best single-leg takedown of his life on Maksim Gelman while being stabbed in the head, neck and face multiples times. The amateur wrestling maneuver worked and cops were able to apprehend Gelman, who was later sentenced to 200 years in prison.
Lozito has a book out now, called "The NY Subway Hero." The memoir is not about seeking a pat on the back for his good deeds or showing off his multitude of scars. Lozito just wants a voice -- because he's as mad at the New York Police Department as he is Gelman.
"It's a story," Lozito told FOX Sports. "It needs to be told. It needs to get out there to a large audience. I don't have someone like Al Sharpton chirping for me or anything like that. I have to do it all on my own."
There were two cops on the train that day two years ago, Terrance Howell and Tamara Taylor. They were part of the manhunt searching for Gelman, who had fatally stabbed three people in Brooklyn and killed another man with his car just hours earlier. Howell and Taylor were in the operator's cab, while Gelman himself was in the subway car, according to Lozito. Gelman knocked on the cab door and identified himself as a cop, Lozito said, and the officers ignored him.
At that point, passengers began recognizing Gelman's face from the news, Lozito said. One even knocked on the cab door in an attempt to alert the police. The commotion prompted Gelman to pull out a knife. Lozito was sitting next to the operator's cab and was the first person in Gelman's view.
Gelman yelled, "You're going to die!" and stabbed Lozito in the face.
Working solely on instinct, the 6-foot-2, 270-pound Lozito got up and shot in for a takedown. Gelman continued to stab him in the back of the head before hitting the ground and being disarmed, Lozito said. That's when Howell and Taylor came out from the cab and arrested Gelman.
According to the NYPD and Howell's affidavit, Howell was the one who tackled Gelman to the floor. Lozito was carted off in a stretcher as cops declared him "likely," which he found out later meant likely to die.
The next few months were a whirlwind for Lozito, who did a lot of media and testified against Gelman. According to Lozito, a grand-jury member told him Howell had changed his story on the stand, admitting to hiding in the cab, because he thought Gelman had a gun.
Lozito was also stabbed under his left eye.
That fact prompted Lozito, 44, to sue the city. Things didn't go his way. A judge dismissed the suit, declaring that the NYPD didn't have an obligation to protect him on the train that day. According to law, the NYPD has the duty to protect the public at large, but not specifically a single individual.
Lozito could not believe Howell and Taylor would not be exposed by the lawsuit -- the money part didn't matter to him as much. The idea to write a book stemmed from his need to tell the sordid tale.
"There shouldn’t be these loopholes in the law to protect you when you're fully prepared to let an unarmed man do your job, getting his head carved up and you're going to watch him die," Lozito said. "You need to be called out on the carpet."
Lozito doesn’t understand how two cops armed with guns could stand by and watch him nearly get stabbed to death. He has nothing against the NYPD as a whole -- his sister is a cop -- but is still haunted by the whole situation.
"It only ends one of two ways," Lozito said. "[Gelman is] either going to give up or he's going to charge at you and you're going to put [a bullet] in his head. There was no chance of [Howell] missing. There was no chance the bullet was going anywhere but in Maksim Gelman. … They're cowards. They let a train full of people, innocent people, unarmed people in an enclosed environment with a murderer that they were on the train to arrest. They chose to save their own hides. That's disgraceful."
Rarely a day goes by that Lozito doesn't think about the horrors of that day. The scars are a constant, gruesome reminder. He'll never get on a subway car again without the memories being there.
All he can do now, though, is continue to tell the story. Lozito is dogged on Twitter, promoting the book. And, if that doesn't work, he'll come up with other ideas. Bermudez, LaFlare, Philippou and Algieri aren't the only ones at Bellmore MMA looking for a fight.
"I hope they don't think I'm giving up," Lozito said. "I'm not giving up. One way or another, this story is going to get out there."
