NEW YORK: A woman was pushed to her death in front of a subway train at the Times Square station on Saturday (Jan 15), police said, a little more than a week after the mayor and governor announced plans to boost subway policing and outreach to homeless people in New York City’s streets and trains.
The man believed responsible fled the scene but turned himself in to transit police a short time later, police commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference with Mayor Eric Adams at the station.
The 40-year-old victim, identified as Michelle Alyssa Go of New York, was waiting for a southbound R train at around 9.40am when she was apparently shoved, according to police.
“This incident was unprovoked, and the victim does not appear to have had any interaction with the subject,” Sewell said.
A second woman told police the man had approached her minutes earlier and she feared he would push her onto the tracks.
“He approaches her and he gets in her space. She gets very, very alarmed,” assistant chief Jason Wilcox said, describing the earlier encounter.
“She tries to move away from him and he gets close to her, and she feels that he was about to physically push her onto the train. As she’s walking away she witnesses the crime where he pushes our other victim in front of the train.”
Police on Saturday night identified the suspect as 61-year-old Simon Martial. Martial, who police said is homeless, was charged with second-degree murder. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney who could comment.
Wilcox said Martial has a criminal history and has been on parole.
“He does have in the past three emotionally disturbed encounters with us that we have documented,” he said.
Subway conditions and safety have become a worry for many New Yorkers during the pandemic. Although police statistics show major felonies in the subways have dropped over the past two years, so has ridership, making it difficult to compare.
Some recent attacks have received public attention and raised alarms. In September, three transit employees were assaulted in separate incidents on one day.
Several riders were slashed and assaulted by a group of attackers on a train in lower Manhattan in May, and four separate stabbings – two of them fatal – happened within a few hours on a single subway line in February.
In recent months there have been several instances of people being stabbed, assaulted or shoved onto the tracks at stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and at Times Square.
Saturday’s attack against Go, who was of Asian descent, also raised concerns amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country.
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