STRAPHANGER SHOT
Stickup at Union Sq. station
A straphanger was shot in a robbery attempt aboard a train at the Union Square subway station during the evening rush on Monday, authorities said.
The 42-year-old victim was on his cellphone on an uptown N train shortly before 5 p.m. when a gunman demanded he hand over the device and then shot him in the leg when he refused, according to police.
“Things do happen,” said NYPD Assistant Chief Vincent Coogan at a press conference outside the station Monday evening. “They happen very little in the subway. The subways are safe.
“We are down in crime this year. One thing I can say is there are way too many guns out there.”
Asked what transit riders should do if approached by a gunman, Coogan replied, “I mean, if there is a person with a gun, maybe you should give the property up.”
The victim suffered non-lifethreatening wounds and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.
Coogan said the unidentified gunman had fired one shot that hit the victim and fled the scene.
He said that there were police officers in the mezzanine area of the station at the time of the shooting and that they applied a tourniquet to the victim’s leg.
Police described the gunman as 5-foot-9 and wearing a black leather jacket and black pants. He was carrying a duffle bag and a black revolver, they said.
The assault was just the latest in a monthslong uptick in transit crime in the city.
On Saturday, a 52-year-old man was injured when another man shoved him onto Brooklyn subway tracks during another robbery attempt.
The unidentified attacker had confronted the man inside the Bushwick Avenue-Aberdeen Street station in Bushwick and demanded his property.
The victim resisted and was then pushed onto the track bed by the attacker. EMS safely retrieved the man from the tracks, but he suffered a fractured leg and a cut to his head. The attacker fled the station.
Back on Sept. 3, a 22-year-old woman stabbed a 55-year-old man multiple times on the 3-line platform in the Bergen Street subway station in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, after the two exited a train, according to police.
The two had been arguing inside the train car, and once on the platform, the woman pulled a knife and stabbed the man in the chest, back and neck, police alleged.
The man was rushed to NewYork-Pres-by-terian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and was expected to survive, according to police. The woman was taken into custody, police said.
Then, on Oct. 2, a 26-year-old man was stabbed during a squabble with another man at the West Fourth Street subway station in Greenwich Village, police said.
That dispute had started with a fight outside a convenience store on West Third Street and Sixth Avenue. The two men tussled at around 4 a.m. and one man ran off to the subway station, with the second in hot pursuit, according to cops.
The first man then pulled a knife and stabbed the other in his abdomen, police allege.
The stabbed man was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-lifethreatening injuries. It wasn’t clear what sparked the fight.