An unhinged man randomly shoved a straphanger onto the tracks in a Lower Manhattan subway station this week — the latest in a spate of similar incidents that Commissioner Dermot Shea called “too common.”
The 26-year-old victim was standing on the northbound platform at the Fulton Street/Broadway–Nassau station around 3:40 p.m. Tuesday when the attacker suddenly shoved him, propelling him onto the tracks, cops said.
The victim suffered non-life-threatening ankle, leg and hand injuries. It was unclear if a train was pulling in at the time.
The alleged attacker, Calvin Wilson, 38, was quickly arrested after he fled to the street, Shea said in a NY1 interview Wednesday morning.
He was charged with assault and reckless endangerment, police said.
The NYPD has “encountered” Wilson multiple times, Shea said.
“We’ve found him sleeping on the subway, we brought him to a shelter multiple times,” the top cop said. “We arrested him in December for threatening an MTA employee with a pipe. We brought him as an emotionally disturbed person to the hospital multiple times, so that’s what that’s what the concern is here. There’s multiple opportunities to get this individual — I mean, this individual has issues.”
The incident follows a series of subway shovings across the city in recent weeks.
In a mid-January attack, a woman was shoved against a moving train at the Lexington Avenue/59th Street station.
A few days earlier, a 32-year-old man was pushed onto the tracks at Times Square-42nd Street, and a station attendant was shoved at the Nassau Avenue station in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve.
“I think we would all agree it’s becoming too common, that this is something disturbing,” Shea told NY1.
Shea said more needs to be done to help people with mental illness in the city.
“It’s not easy but we need to talk about it because, at the same time we’re saying, take the police out of mental health illness,” he said, referring to a mental health initiative announced in November that would divert calls about emotionally distressed New Yorkers away from the NYPD and to newly formed teams of specially trained workers.
“In appropriate circumstances we support that, but there’s got to be follow up. This person is a danger, unfortunately, and he’s not alone.”
