Crime surge brings fear to NYC subway

New York City's subway system, the largest in the United States, has been struggling with a plunge in passenger numbers during the pandemic. Now, more traditional concerns are resurfacing in the form of rising crime. At the weekend, a 40-year-old woman of Asian background was killed when she was pushed on to the subway tracks by a homeless man.

Michelle Alyssa Go, a senior manager at consultancy Deloitte, was pushed in front of a train at Times Square station on Saturday. Simon Martial, 61, who has a history of mental health problems and a prison record, turned himself in to police and confessed to the crime within an hour of the attack.

"We're going to drive down crime, and we're going to make sure New Yorkers feel safe in our subway system," Mayor Eric Adams told reporters on Tuesday.

"And they don't feel that way now. I don't feel that way when I take the train every day, or when I'm moving throughout our transportation system."

Adams is a former captain in the New York Police Department and transit officer.

Safety and crime were some of the driving factors behind Adams' election, according to The Associated Press. The former New York Police Department captain made a point during his campaign last year of talking about the need to combat violent crime, which has ticked up during the pandemic.

His concession that he doesn't feel safe on the subway system comes just days after he said the subway is safe and that there is only a "perception" that it isn't after the woman was pushed to her death at Times Square station.

The shoving was the second to occur at the same Times Square platform in a little more than two months. On Nov 12, a robber pushed an Asian woman on to the tracks. She was rescued.

In an earlier subway death this year, a man was hit by a train on New Year's Day when he jumped down to the tracks to help a man who had fallen after he had been attacked by a group of teenagers. Two teenagers were charged with murder.

In September last year, three transit employees were assaulted in separate incidents on one day. Several riders were slashed and assaulted by a group of attackers on a train in Lower Manhattan in May, and four separate stabbings－two of them fatal－happened within hours on a single subway line in February.

Rising concerns

The city's subway system is contending with riders' fears about crime and public safety. By Dec 12, passengers had been pushed on to the tracks 27 times, up from 25 during the same period in 2020, according to the New York Police Department.

One day after the attack on Go, the platform was back open and passengers said they had no choice but to continue taking the train. "I try to be aware of my surroundings," Jonathan Jones told Pix 11, a news outlet.

The overall ridership is less than half of what it was before the pandemic began, with 3.1 million riders on an average day, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Transit system crimes soared 82 percent in the first week of January compared with the same period last year.

The killing of Go also fueled anxieties about the rising tide of hate crime against Asians during the pandemic in New York and around the country.

Police said the killing of Go, including whether it was a hate crime, was under investigation. But the police said minutes before Go was pushed, Martial approached another woman, who was not Asian, and put her in fear that he would push her to the tracks.

Agencies contributed to this story.