Subway Flasher Sentenced For Public Lewdness

POSTED: 1:34 pm EDT April 18, 2006
UPDATED: 1:49 pm EDT April 18, 2006

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NEW YORK -- A restaurateur who admitted he exposed himself to a woman in a subway car, an act the woman captured with her cellular telephone camera, was sentenced Tuesday to two years probation and ordered to undergo counseling.

Daniel Hoyt, 43, of Manhattan, was sentenced in Manhattan Criminal Court on his guilty plea to public lewdness, a misdemeanor. He admitted he exposed himself while on the R train on Aug. 24, 2005, near the East Eighth Street station.

Hoyt and Tolentin Chan founded the popular Quintessence raw-food restaurants on East 10th Street in the East Village and on Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side.

Judge Alexander Jeong rejected a request by Assistant District Attorney Andrew Zakrocki to follow a Probation Department recommendation and send Hoyt to jail.


"I will impose the sentence promised," Jeong said. He added that Hoyt has to continue once-weekly psychiatric counseling for the entire two-year probation period. The judge warned that a probation violation could get Hoyt 90 days in jail.

As Hoyt left court, he said, I apologize for my actions and I'm sorry for anyone I may have offended."

A court complaint says Hoyt committed four similar acts of public lewdness -- one on a No. 1 or No. 9 train on Oct. 19, 2004, near West 72nd Street, and three others on R trains in the East Village on July 13, Aug. 19 and Aug. 24, 2005.

While Hoyt was in court, about a half-dozen women marched with signs outside the courthouse, denouncing the defendant. Their demonstration was in response to his alleged comments in a magazine interview, that some women liked what he had been doing and probably would want to date him.

One marcher was Thao Nguyen, 23, the woman who caught Hoyt "in flagrante" with her cell phone camera. She carried a sign that said, "Actually, if I met you in a bar I wouldn't date you."

Lauren Spees, a founder of the group hollabacknyc.com which encourages New Yorkers to record street harassers on their cell phones, said of Nguyen, "She is like the Rosa Parks of street harassment.

Yee-haw, motherfu-kers.

*flashes everybody*

On August 31, 2005, Hoyt was arrested by police and charged with public lewdness, a misdemeanor. The charges stemmed from allegations that Hoyt began masturbating in front of Thao Nguyen while riding New York City's uptown R train on August 19, 2005. Ms. Nguyen took out her cell phone, a Samsung P777 model equipped with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, and took a picture of the masturbating man, who promptly fled the train. Subsequently, Nguyen posted the photo *[2] on various websites along with a description of the incident in the hopes that the public would be able to identify the perpetrator.

Hoyt believes that if he and Nguyen had only met under different circumstances, she might really like him. “You know, she’d go, ‘That guy’s pretty cool. He’s got this restaurant, and he’s fun,’ ” Hoyt says. “She’d probably want to go out with me."

One marcher was Thao Nguyen, 23, the woman who caught Hoyt "in flagrante" with her cell phone camera. She carried a sign that said, "Actually, if I met you in a bar I wouldn't date you."

That's 1 Fugly Goofy-Looking Mofo. You gotta have bad taste to hook up with something like that.

Thao Nguyen Rocks! She's like my hero now.