Yahiness Holden

Introduction

Yahiness Holden is a 33-year-old homeless New York City man with sixteen prior arrests who was charged on Sunday, November 8, 2026, with the attempted rape of an 83-year-old woman in her Upper Manhattan apartment building, according to police and law-enforcement sources. Holden — whose rap sheet includes arrests for forcible touching and weapons possession — faces charges of attempted rape, assault, two counts of burglary, stalking and attempted sexual abuse stemming from an October 26 attack near Vermilyea Avenue and West 204th Street in Inwood, and was awaiting arraignment as of Sunday, the New York Post reported.

Background Information

Police said Holden followed the elderly victim into her building shortly before 9 a.m. on October 26, then exposed himself and made “sexual advances” when she reached her apartment. He allegedly tried to force his way inside as he exposed himself — at one point asking “Do you want this?”, according to amNewYork — and the woman fought him off by slamming the door in his face before calling 911, suffering minor hand injuries that were treated by EMS at the scene. “After a slight struggle, the individual was unsuccessful in entering the apartment and fled the location on foot,” the New York Police Department said in a statement to the New York Post. The NYPD had released surveillance images of the unidentified suspect after the attack, images the Daily News and the Post republished with their arrest coverage.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged, not convicted. Holden faces attempted rape, assault, two counts of burglary, stalking and attempted sexual abuse charges in the October 26 attack. He has not entered a plea, arraignment was pending as of Sunday, November 8, 2026, and every charge is an unadjudicated allegation; he is presumed innocent.

The arrest that produced the charges came, improbably, through a subway seat dispute, according to police and law-enforcement sources cited by the New York Post, amNewYork and the New York Daily News. At around 9:18 a.m. on Saturday, November 7, officers found Holden lying across a pair of seats on a northbound E train at the Kew Gardens station in Queens and stopped to question him over the seat-hogging. Holden allegedly gave officers a false name, but investigators quickly recognized him as the man captured on the surveillance video circulated after the October 26 attack, law-enforcement sources said, and he was taken into custody. He was transferred to Manhattan’s 5th Precinct, questioned by the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit, and charged a day later — Sunday, November 8 — with attempted rape, assault, two counts of burglary, stalking and attempted sexual abuse, with his arraignment still pending, the three outlets reported.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case drew immediate tabloid attention, with headlines that led with the suspect’s record and the oddity of the capture — the Post’s “creep with 16 prior busts,” amNewYork’s “homeless fiend,” the Daily News’s subway-seats arrest framing — and with the image of an eighty-three-year-old woman driving off her attacker with a slammed door. The coverage also carried a darker statistical backdrop: despite a historic dip in most major crimes in New York so far this year, rapes continue to buck the trend, with 1,774 reported citywide through November 1, up from 1,740 over the same span last year — a 2 percent increase, per the New York Post. No public statement from Holden or an attorney for him has been reported.

Current Status

Holden remained in custody pending arraignment as of Sunday, November 8, 2026, with the New York Post reporting he was “awaiting arraignment” and the Daily News reporting the proceeding was pending that day. No plea has been entered or reported, and no bail decision, indictment or trial date has been reported. His prior arrests — sixteen in total, including for forcible touching and weapons possession — have not resulted in reported convictions tied to this case, which stands unadjudicated.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Holden held no public role; his exposure to prison time if convicted was not stated in the coverage, and attempted rape is charged in New York as a violent felony. The documented consequence so far is the loss of liberty pending arraignment on charges that carry the city’s scrutiny of a sixteen-arrest defendant accused of preying on an elderly woman, and a case that adds to the debate over how repeat offenders move through the city’s transit system and courts — a debate the coverage itself joined by pairing his arrest with the year’s rise in reported rapes.

Sources

• New York Post, “Creep with 16 prior busts charged in attempted rape of 83-year-old NYC woman: cops,” November 8, 2026. source
• amNewYork, “Homeless man with lengthy rap sheet arrested for attempting to rape of 84-year-old Inwood woman,” November 8, 2026. source
• New York Daily News, “Homeless man taking up 2 subway seats arrested for attempted rape of 83-year-old woman,” November 8, 2026. source