A 62-year-old man suffered minor injuries Sunday morning after he was pushed onto the subway tracks at the Fulton Street subway station in Lower Manhattan, the New York Police Department said. The man, who hasn’t been identified publicly, made contact with the lead train car while he was on the tracks, police said. He treated at a hospital for a leg laceration.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the attack was targeted. The NYPD has not made any arrests, and an investigation is underway, a spokesperson said.
“I don’t want to tell people that they should stand on subway platforms and feel like they’re, you know, in threat of their lives,” Lieber told WABC. “But everybody should stand away from the edge of the platform.”
Asked about platform screen doors — as used by subway systems in other countries — Lieber said there are physical constraints the MTA must consider, like the “ability to maintain ADA accessibility,” a reference to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Literally, the structure of our very old, 100-year-old stations don’t accommodate it,” Lieber said. “And there’s some real ventilation issues: How will we ventilate — for fire code safety and for human comfort — in that event?”
A 36-year-old witness went down to the tracks to help the assault victim and was “subsequently struck by the oncoming train, causing his death,” police said. The train didn’t strike the assault victim, according to police, and he was treated for a fractured arm.
“We know we have a job to do. We’re going to do both: We’re going to drive down crime, and we going to make sure New Yorkers feel safe in our subway system, and they don’t feel that way now,” said Adams, who took office this month.
Though not near the rate of the early 1990s, crime in New York has been on the rise in recent months. In November — the most recent month for which the city has released data — the crime rate increased by 21.3% from the same period last year, according to the NYPD.
In the transit system, there were 28 robberies, 24 felony assaults and 42 grand larcenies from January 1 to 16, compared to 13 robberies, 20 assaults and 25 grand larcenies during the first 16 days of last year, according to the NYPD.
CNN’s Nicole Chavez, Ray Sanchez and Mark Morales contributed to this report.