Stephen L. Tanenbaum, a 62-year-old man, died on February 11, 2011, after an ordinary Friday in New York City was shattered by a sudden act of street violence.
That afternoon in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, he was crossing near Ocean Avenue and Avenue R when a stolen car came barreling through the intersection. The driver was Maksim Gelman, already deep into a violent rampage that had begun earlier the same day. After rear-ending another vehicle and stabbing its driver during a carjacking, Gelman sped off in the newly stolen Pontiac—and in the chaos of flight, struck Tanenbaum, leaving him gravely injured.
The collision was not the end of the terror. Investigators and news reports later laid out a brutal, fast-moving chain of crimes that stretched from Brooklyn into Manhattan: multiple stabbings, additional attempted carjackings, and finally an attack on a subway passenger as Gelman tried to stay ahead of police. The city’s transit system became the last stage of the chase; riders recognized him from news coverage, tips poured in, and officers ultimately subdued him at the Times Square subway station after he had attacked a passenger on a 3 train.
In the wake of the spree, prosecutors moved quickly. A Brooklyn grand jury indicted Gelman on 13 counts, including multiple counts of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, first- and second-degree robbery, and second-degree assault, as authorities attributed four deaths and multiple injuries to the rampage.
Months later, the case shifted from a manhunt narrative to courtroom finality. Gelman pleaded guilty to murder and other charges connected to the February 2011 violence, including the episode in which Tanenbaum was struck and fatally injured after the carjacking. In January 2012, Gelman was sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murders and related crimes, and in February 2012 he received an additional 25-year sentence for slashing a subway rider at the end of the spree—an extra coda of punishment for a final, public act of violence carried out underground.
To people who knew Tanenbaum outside the headlines, his death was not just another grim entry in a spree timeline. He was widely recognized in the numismatic world as a longtime dealer and specialist in tokens and medals—an expert who could identify obscure pieces and guide research in esoteric corners of the field. Colleagues remembered him as a lifelong collector and a steady source of knowledge, someone deeply involved in the study and cataloging of Civil War-era token history and active in collector organizations. His life’s work had been built on patience and attention to detail; his death arrived in an instant of reckless speed and panic on a Brooklyn street.
