A 36-year-old man is in critical condition after being shot in the head on a New York City subway when a fight broke out between him and a 32-year-old man on Thursday.
The incident, which appeared to begin when the 36-year-old black man began berating the 32-year-old man while riding the northbound A train around 4:45 p.m., according to Michael Kemper, the Police Department’s Chief of Transit, The New York Times reported. Video footage of the incident showed the 36-year-old black man, yelling at the other man, “I’ll beat you up!” before getting in his face and saying, “F*** your race. F*** your kind. F*** you.”
Shortly after the two men got into the verbal tussle, they squared up, causing subway passengers around them to move to a different area of the train. “There’s babies on here!” one woman shouted as the men began to fight. The 36-year-old man eventually pushed the other man down onto a seat and punched him several times before a woman attempted to stop him from delivering any more blows.
The fight was briefly broken up when another man, along with the woman, stepped in between the two men. The video showed blood on the back of the 36-year-old man, who asked if the other man had stabbed him. The 36-year-old continued to move toward the other man and eventually pulled out a handgun, causing passengers to scramble toward the other end of the train with some people screaming, “Get down! Get down!” and “Let me out!”
Multiple gunshots then rang out, but the video doesn’t show the shooting as the person recording runs off the train when it comes to a stop. Police said the 32-year-old man wrestled the firearm away from the other man before shooting him and was arrested on the scene, The New York Post reported. The 36-year-old man was rushed to Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in critical condition.
As of Thursday evening, Chief Kemper said it remained unclear if the 32-year-old man would face any charges or if his actions were in self-defense.
“The victim here, as the chief said, appears to be the aggressor,” said Janno Lieber, the transit authority’s chief executive. “But the real victims are the people I saw in those videos, who are having a harrowing time because they’re on a train with somebody with a gun.”
The shooting came just a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) deployed National Guard troops and state troopers to the Big Apple’s subways to check passengers’ bags. The city also increased its police presence in subways in hopes of deterring would-be criminals.
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Multiple deadly attacks on NYC subways have made headlines in recent months, and last year, U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after he restrained Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was allegedly threatening passengers on a subway car. Neely lost consciousness and later died following the incident.
Penny pleaded not guilty to the charges and has maintained that he was acting to protect his fellow passengers.