The man was standing on the elevated platform of a 7 train in Queens.(Photo: Julie Jacobson, AP)
NEW YORK -- Police searched for a woman who killed a man by
pushing him in front of a subway train and released surveillance video
Friday of her running away from the station.
Commuters, meanwhile, absorbed the news of the second fatal subway shove in the city this month.
It
was a "tragic but incredibly rare incident" in a system that moves more
than 5.5 million people a day, MTA spokesman, Kevin Ortiz said on
Friday.
There are no new security plans to address this but the
MTA has regular public information campaigns that encourage people
"first and foremost to stand well back from the edge of the platform
while waiting for a train," said Ortiz..
On the MTA web site,
under customer security, there's a listing that is labeled: "The Train
Always Wins" leading to a video with a warning that it "contains images
that may be disturbing to some viewers"
Howard Roth, who takes the
subway daily, said, "It's just a really sad commentary on the world and
on human beings, period," said y. He said the deadly push was food for
thought about subway safety, "but I guess the best thing is what they
tell you - don't stand near the edge, and keep your eyes open."
The
suspect in Thursday night's killing had been following the man closely
on a Queens platform and mumbling to herself, witnesses told police. She
got up from a nearby bench and shoved the man, who was standing with
his back to her, as the train pulled into the platform. He was pinned
under the train as it pulled to a stop, police said.
It did not
appear the man noticed her before he was shoved onto the tracks, police
said, adding that the condition of the man's body was making it
difficult to identify him. The woman was described as Hispanic, in her
20s, heavyset and about 5-foot-5, wearing a blue, white and gray ski
jacket and Nike sneakers with gray on top and red on the bottom.
It
was unclear whether the man and the woman knew each other. And it's
also unclear whether anyone tried to help the man up before he was
struck - or whether there was enough time for anyone to do anything.
The surveillance video was taken at a nearby intersection. It shows a woman dashing from a crosswalk and down a sidewalk.
Asked
about the episode at the station on Queens Boulevard in the Sunnyside
neighborhood, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed Friday to legal and policy
changes that led to the release of many mentally ill people from
psychiatric institutions from the 1960s through 1990s.
"The courts
or the law have changed and said, no, you can't do that unless they're a
danger to society; our laws protect you. That's fair enough," Bloomberg
said on The John Gambling Show with Mayor Mike on WOR-AM.
On
Dec. 3, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han was pushed in front of a train in Times
Square. Apparently no other passenger tried to help Han.
A photograph of him on the tracks a split second before he was killed was published on the front of the New York Post the
next day, causing an uproar and debate over whether the photographer,
who had been waiting for a train, should have tried to help him and
whether the newspaper should have run the image.
A homeless man,
30-year-old Naeem Davis, was charged with murder in Han's death and was
ordered held without bail. He has pleaded not guilty and has said that
Han was the aggressor and had attacked him first. The two men hadn't met
before.
Like many subway riders, Micah Siegel follows her own set
of safety precautions during her daily commute: stand against a wall or
pillar to keep someone from coming up behind you, watch out when
navigating a crowded or narrow platform to avoid being knocked - even
accidentally - onto the tracks.
"I do try to be aware of what's
around me and who's around me, especially as a young woman," Siegel, a
21-year-old college student, said as she waited at Pennsylvania Station
on Friday.
So does Roth, who's 60.
"It sounds a little wimpy if you're like, 'Who's to push me?' But it's better to be safe than sorry," he said.
Associated Press