A 23-year-old woman in New York City said she did not want to cooperate with prosecutors after a man attacked her on the subway because she did not want to “put another black man in jail.” The same suspect is now accused of pushing a 76-year-old man to his death at a Chelsea station.
The New York Post interviewed the unidentified woman, who recounted a harrowing experience with a friend on a Manhattan subway. On April 2, the suspect, Rhamell Burke, a former Broadway dancer who fell off during the pandemic, approached the woman and her friend and tried to strike up a conversation. The two shut him down and tried to move to another subway car, according to The Post.
The alleged attacker didn’t take no for an answer. Burke, according to the woman, yanked the back of her head and kicked her friend.
“He comes up, and he kicks my friend in the back, and basically pushes him through the transition of the cars,” the woman said in an interview with The Post.
“My friend freaks out, runs away, and then he grabs me by the head and pushes my head down, trying to, like, maybe throw me on the ground or something. But I didn’t, I resisted as much as I could. I didn’t fall, and then I immediately opened up the car and then ran towards my friend,” she said to The Post.
The woman and her friend got off the train at the West 4th Street–Washington Square station in Greenwich Village, but Burke followed them, she said.
“We started running a little bit, but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives. They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops, and we respected that,” the woman said.
Cooperation with law enforcement appeared to stop there. The alleged female victim declined to cooperate with prosecutors, and the same suspect is now accused of fatally shoving 76-year-old Ross Falzone down a flight of stairs at Manhattan’s 18th Street subway station.
Falzone, a retired high school teacher who lived alone, landed on his head at the bottom of the stairs and sustained a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine, and a fractured rib, according to the New York Times. He later died from his injuries.
NEW: Repeat offender and Broadway dancer shoves a 76-year-old retired teacher down New York City subway stairs, killing him.
32-year-old Rhamell Burke was seen grinning in court after allegedly carrying out the horrific murder.
The victim, Ross Falzone, was a social worker for… pic.twitter.com/cBlbscyOOW
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 11, 2026
Three months before the deadly attack, Burke had been arrested four times, including for assault on a police officer.
New York Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “horrified” by the killing and called for an investigation into whether the tragedy could have been prevented.
“New Yorkers deserve answers,” Mamdani said in a statement. “That is why I’ve directed NYC Health + Hospitals to conduct both an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy and a comprehensive review of their psychiatric evaluation and discharge protocols.”
Police had previously taken Burke to a hospital after he was observed “acting erratically.” About an hour later, he was released and allegedly carried out the deadly attack later that night, according to the New York Post.
“I regret it 100%, and I actually feel really bad that a man lost his life,” the woman said of her decision not to cooperate with prosectors. “Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”
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