Man, 48, fatally shot on subway in apparent unprovoked attack

Violence has shaken confidence in NYC public transit system

A man was shot and killed Sunday morning on a subway train in lower Manhattan in an attack that investigators believed was unprovoked, police said.

The victim, 48, whose name police have not released, was shot in the chest around 11:40 a.m. while riding a northbound Q train that was pulling into the Canal Street station, according to the New York Police Department.

Kenneth Corey, the chief of department at NYPD, said there was no interaction between the victim and his attacker before the shooting, which occurred on the last car of the train.

“According to witnesses, the suspect was walking back and forth in the same train car, and, without provocation, pulled out a gun and fired it at the victim at close range as the train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge,” Corey said.

Police officers tried to resuscitate the victim before paramedics arrived, but he died at Bellevue Hospital, police said. No one else was injured, according to Corey.

The assailant fled up to the street level and has not been caught, police said.

He was described as a darkskinned man, heavyset with a beard, wearing a dark sweatshirt, an orange T-shirt, gray sweatpants and white sneakers.

Corey said investigators were reviewing video footage from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s surveillance cameras and interviewing witnesses who were on the train. He asked for the public’s help in finding the gunman.

The shooting occurred a little less than six weeks after a gunman shot 10 people onboard an R train in Brooklyn, leaving dozens more injured in the aftermath of what officials have said was a terror attack.

The violence has shaken confidence in the safety of the subway as the city recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. Mayor Eric Adams has sought to reassure riders by removing homeless people living in the subway and placing hundreds of additional police officers in the system.

Murders are rare on the city’s buses and subways. Three people have been killed in the transit system this year, compared with four at this time last year, according to the most recent police statistics.

Major felony crime on buses and subways represents just 2 percent of overall city crime. But it is at the same level as before the pandemic, although ridership is 40 percent lower. And a succession of highly visible, random attacks — including the mass shooting on the N train and the shoving death of a woman in the Times Square station in January — has fueled a sense of chaos and lawlessness in a system indispensable to the life and economy of the city.

On Sunday afternoon, the train on which the shooting occurred was still stopped in the Canal Street station.

Three uniformed police officers were guarding the last car, which was partitioned with yellow police tape strung between handrails.

Social media users described seeing the shots fired and people running off the train after the late-morning shooting.