A suspect was led from the scene by police after the man was pushed onto the tracks
Prosecutors charge 23-year-old with attempted murder following attack in city’s 18th Street station A subway passenger in New York City has been left critically injured after a stranger shoved him into the path of an oncoming train.
The 45-year-old man was standing on the platform, apparently looking at his phone, when he was suddenly pushed onto the tracks by a 23-year-old named as Kamel Hawkins.
He fell underneath the approaching train but miraculously survived.
As firefighters pulled him from between subway carriages, a bystander shouted: “He’s alive, he’s alive.” He was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The incident, which happened in the city’s 18th Street subway station on Tuesday afternoon, was captured by security cameras. Police have yet to establish a motive for the attack.
Hawkins has been charged with attempted murder and second-degree assault.
He has a substantial criminal record, US media reported. He was charged with assault in 2019 after attacking a police officer, and was also charged with assault and weapons possession in October last year.
It follows a recent spate of random attacks on the New York subway network, which carried more than a billion passengers in 2024.
High-profile incidents include a woman being set on fire by a stranger while she was asleep on a train on Dec 22.
The victim, named as Debrina Kawam from New Jersey, died of her injuries following the attack in Brooklyn.
The 57-year-old had previously worked at the pharmaceutical giant Merck from 2000 until 2002, but her life subsequently took a downward turn and she had been living in a homeless shelter after moving to the city.
Sebastian Zapeta, 33, has been charged with murder and arson over her death.
He allegedly fanned the flames with a shirt, engulfing her in the blaze, before sitting on a platform bench and watching as she burned. He is due to appear in court on Jan 7.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, a man attacked two people with a knife in Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station.
The victims both survived, while the man was arrested on assault and other charges, authorities said.
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, hours before the latest attack, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, insisted: “Crime is not surging in the subway system. You know, we have some high-profile incidents, and we’re really disturbed about it.”
He also said overall subway crime was low. However, concerns over crime prompted authorities to deploy more than 1,000 members of the National Guard to patrol the transit system during the holiday season.
The recent spate of attacks also prompted the Guardian Angels, a group of anti-crime volunteers, to begin patrolling the subway system for the first time since 2020.
The non-profit organization was founded in 1979 to deal with a surge in crime in the city.
