Man, 24, charged in fatal attack in NYC’s subway
A man has been charged with second-degree murder in what police call “an unprovoked attack” along the New York City subway system this week.
Carlton Mcpherson, 24, is accused of shoving someone into the path of an oncoming train Monday evening on a train platform in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood, a New York Police Department spokesperson told USA TODAY.
Police responded just before 8 p.m. Monday to a 911 call reporting a person on the tracks at the 125th Street subway station, where arriving officers found an unconscious man struck by a northbound train, the spokesperson said. Emergency medical responders pronounced him dead at the scene.
Mcpherson, of the Bronx, was arrested at the scene and charged later that day, the police spokesperson told USA TODAY on Wednesday morning.
According to a preliminary investigation, police said, the victim was pushed to the tracks as the train entered the station.
The killing came just hours after the New York City Police Department’s Chief of Patrol John Chell announced a new transit initiative called “Operation Fare Play,” with plans to add 800 more police officers underground following an uptick in violent crimes on the subway in recent weeks.
Police have not released the identity of the victim, but The New York Times and WNBC-TV identified him as 54year-old Jason Volz.
Volz’s ex-wife, Anna Torres, told the Times that he had recently moved into an apartment in the city, had been sober for two years and was “really turning things around.”
“It just seems like such a waste,” Torres told the news outlet. “This is crazy because he survived the pandemic, survived being homeless. He got better, he got clean and everything was working.”
Torres could not immediately be reached by USA TODAY.
As of Wednesday, New York Department of Corrections records showed Mcpherson remained jailed without bond and was set to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday for a hearing on the murder charge.
An attorney of record for Mcpherson was not listed online.
Mcpherson’s mother, Octavia Scouras, told The New York Times her son was raised by one of his grandparents and had been hospitalized at least twice for mental health treatment.
“I did everything possible so this child would have a better life,” Scouras, who lives in New York City, told the Times.
As of Wednesday, police said the subway slaying remains under investigation.
The killing follows two other recent, high-profile incidents on the subway.
On March 14, an armed 32-year-old man who boarded without paying for a ticket got into a dispute on a train in Brooklyn with another man, age 36, before being shot and killed with his own weapon.
And on March 9, a domestic dispute left a 29-year-old woman severely injured and her 35-year-old partner charged with attempted murder.
Contributing: Terry Collins, USA TODAY