After Another Attack, a New Subway Warning

NYC officials warns riders to keep away from the edges of platforms
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 24, 2022 1:05 PM CST
After Another Attack, a New Subway Warning
People hold candles during a vigil in honor of Michelle Alyssa Go, a victim of a subway attack, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022, in New York's Times Square.   (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

The chief of New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority says that while he doesn't want to unduly alarm subway riders, he is urging them to stand back from the edge of platforms to avoid being shoved. Janno Lieber's remarks followed the latest subway attack, in which a 62-year-old man was pushed onto the tracks as a train arrived at Fulton Street station in Manhattan Sunday, the Washington Post reports. The train driver pulled the emergency brake but the man received a leg laceration from the first car and was hospitalized, reports the New York Daily News. The attacker fled the station and has not been apprehended. Eight days earlier, Michelle Alyssa Go was killed in an unprovoked attack at the Times Square station.

"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." He said installing platform screen doors, used to prevent attacks and suicides in other systems, would raise accessibility and ventilation issues, reports CNN. "Literally, the structure of our very old, 100-year-old stations (does not) accommodate it," he said.

Martial Simon, a 61-year-old homeless man with a history of mental health issues, has been charged with second-degree murder in Go's death. Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that the city plans to deploy mental health teams as part of an effort to make people feel safe on the subway, the Hill reports. The city will "flood our system with mental health professionals and law enforcement working as a team to move out the disorder that's clearly in the subway system in our city," he said. (It's happening outside the US, too.)

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