SHOCKING END TO A SHOCKING CRIME

Naked subway shover dies in melee on NYC tracks

 

By Larry Celona and Sara Dorn

 

New York Post

January 16, 2021

 

A naked maniac shoved a man off of a Harlem subway platform Saturday, but then also jumped down and zapped himself to death on the third rail during a crazed, on-the-tracks scuffle with a good Samaritan, police said. 

The unhinged and unclothed man had been wandering through the 2 and 3 station at 110th Street and Central Park North when he pushed the man, a stranger, at around 3:40 p.m., police said.

A brave fellow straphanger jumped down to the track bed to help.

That’s when the nude attacker jumped onto the tracks himself — and began pummeling the would-be rescuer, police said.

During the struggle, the attacker made contact with the third rail. He was pronounced dead at the scene shortly afterward, police said.

 

Contact with third rail ends maniac's life

A train was entering the station at the time, but did not make contact with the two surviving straphangers, police said.

They were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital with minor injuries.

“It happens more than you think,” a station employee who was manning a payment booth at the time told The Post.

“I mean, you live in New York? You know what it’s like on the subway these days.”

“Absolutely crazy,” straphanger Edris Bacchiano, 59, who rides the 3 train for work, said of a shaky snippet of video, obtained by The Post, that shows the careening, nude man kicking his victim before shoving him with both hands onto the tracks.

“I used to stand at the edge of the platform. You know, waiting for the doors to open,” she said.

“I don’t do that anymore. I am just more careful. I’m a native New Yorker. I know what time it is. You see I’m standing with my back to the wall. That’s because I don’t want anyone coming up behind me.”

Bacchiano wondered if the stresses of the pandemic were to blame.

“There’s been a lot of this lately,” she said.

“Last few months I have read a number of different stories. People pushing. People shoving. But can you imagine?” she added.

“I just try to stay away from people I should stay away from. I’m a social worker. Let me put it that way.”

At least four people have been shoved onto the tracks since November; miraculously, all survived.

They include a 32-year-old man shoved at Times Square-42nd Street in January by an attacker who then fled, and a station attendant shoved at the Nassau Avenue station in Brooklyn on Christmas eve.

Two shovings in November, one at the 42nd Street-Bryant Park station and one in Union Square, were by homeless attackers, both of whom were apprehended, police have said.