San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
2 killed in spree against homeless people in N.Y.
NEW YORK —The first killing was just after 11 p.m. Friday on a subway train in Queens: Police found a man, apparently homeless, dead from stab wounds to the neck and torso, slumped on a seat.
The second was two hours later and 25 miles away, but on the same New York City subway line: a 44year-old woman, also apparently homeless, stabbed throughout her body underneath a seat on a train at a station in Upper Manhattan.
At a third subway station, a homeless man sleeping on an exit stairwell was awakened by a sharp pain in his back. He, too, had been stabbed. He ran to a bank, collapsed and was in “very serious condition” at a hospital, police said.
All three attacks, police say, were likely committed by the same person. And they may be linked to a nonfatal attack Friday morning, in which an assailant yelled, “I’m going to kill you,” then stabbed a 67-year-old homeless man in the knee and buttocks as he pushed his walker on a train platform.
The four attacks — all within 24 hours on the A line — amounted to an alarming surge in the recent spate of violence in the subways and underscored the vulnerability of the hundreds of homeless people who shelter in the transit system.
The stabbings recalled a horrific night of violence in October 2019, when four homeless men were beaten to death while sleeping on the street in Chinatown. Another homeless man, Randy Rodriguez Santos, was eventually charged in the murders.
On Saturday, investigators were canvassing the locations of the new attacks: the 181st Street station in Upper Manhattan, where the two nonfatal stabbings occurred; Rockaway-Mott Avenue station in Queens, where the man was found dead; and Inwood-207th Street station in Upper Manhattan, where the woman was killed.
Even though the subways have only a fraction of the ridership they had before the pandemic, violent crimes have persisted and at times increased. For 2020 through mid-November, there were more incidents of felony assault, rape, homicide and robbery in the subways than during the same period in 2019.
According to the most recent statistics, crime in the transit system in January 2021 was down more than 50 percent from January 2020, but subway ridership was down about 70 percent during that time, making crime that occurs there stand out.
So far in February, at least five people were slashed on trains or in stations, a 26year-old man was shoved to the tracks in the financial district, and a woman was shoved off a subway platform in the Bronx by a woman in what appeared to be another unprovoked attack.
On Saturday, Sarah Feinberg, interim president of the MTA’s subway agency, and Tony Utano, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, released a joint statement calling for increased police presence on the subway.
“The recent horrifying attacks in the subway system are outrageous and unacceptable,” the statement read. “We have been calling on the city to add more police to the system, and to do more to assist those who desperately need mental health assistance. The time for action is now.”
For months, a policy battle has been waged over homeless people in the subway system. Many homeless people say they choose to sleep there to avoid the risk of contracting COVID-19 at the city’s barracks-style group shelters, which have a reputation for being unsafe. The city has added hundreds of additional private shelter beds in hotel rooms and stepped up efforts to move homeless people from the subway to shelters, but some homeless people now move to the Staten Island ferry or camp outdoors when the trains close down shortly after 1 a.m.
Meanwhile, the MTA drew criticism last week after a spokesperson said that benches were removed from a station to discourage homeless people from sleeping there. On Friday, advocates for homeless people sued the transit system, arguing that pandemic rules barring people from staying in a station for over an hour and prohibiting large carts violated the civil rights of homeless people.