‘MY LAST TIME IN THE SUBWAY’
B’klyn straphanger still in pain after he was shoved to tracks by a stranger
A man shoved off a Brooklyn subway platform by a stranger says he will never set foot in an MTA station again, fearing another unprovoked attack.
Pierre Augustin was heading to his office about 3 p.m. on Sunday when he tried to catch a Manhattan-bound No. 2 train at the President St.-Medgar Evers College station in Crown Heights, he told the Daily News.
The 66-year-old owner of a tax services business was waiting on the platform when he was confronted by Corey Walcott.
“I just pass him [and] he says, ‘I’m going to kill you,’” Augustin recalled. “I don’t know him! He doesn’t know me!”
Augustin tried to escape but had nowhere to run before Walcott, 44, allegedly shoved him from behind.
“I was trying to move and hide behind the pole and it was close to the edge,” Augustin recalled. “He pushed me and I fell.”
He plunged to the tracks, landing on his right side. He was able to protect his head with his right hand — a reflex he credited to studying karate as a child.
Two men who witnessed the attack helped Augustin back up to the platform.
“They went down and helped me out,” the man said. “At that time, it was so difficult to move. … They saved my life.”
One of the men who helped him called 911, and Augustin spoke eith the dispatcher on the other end.
“No one was there to help me,” he said. “If these two guys didn’t decide to go down, who even knows what would happen.”
Medics took him to Kings County Hospital to be treated for injuries to his wrist, body and knees. He was released that same night, but the pain continues to keep Augustin home out of work.
“If I try to go down, I cannot go up,” he said. “If I go back, it’s painful, painful. If I sit down, I cannot get up. In 10 years, two year, three years, what will happen to my body?”
Augustin says he never saw a police presence in the station during his commutes to work before the attack.
“They should have someone to help you when you’re having difficulties,” he added. “There’s nothing — no police, nothing.”
The attack has left Augustin with little faith in the safety of the city’s transit system.
“The subway system should have a better way to protect their passengers,” he said.
Police caught up to Walcott at 14th St. and Sixth Ave. in Greenwich Village on Tuesday and charged him with assault. Cops had earlier released surveillance footage of him and asked for the public’s help identifying him.
Walcott, who is homeless, has 19 prior arrests in the city, including for multiple counts of forcible touching, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said at a news conference.
“It’s impossible if they keep sending him back to the streets,” Augustin said. “That’s the problem. This is a mess.”
Augustin called upon the city to implement functioning mental health policies that would keep violent people off the streets and out of subway stations.
“I know you cannot act like that unless you have some kind of trouble,” he said. “He should be someplace else. This city is responsible for that.”
Last month, a man died after another rider pushed him to the tracks from an Upper West Side station platform. The victim, 34, and the attacker had been engaging in sexual activity on a southbound No. 2 train and began feuding, said multiple law enforcement sources.
The train conductor ejected both men from the train at the W. 96th St. station about 2 a.m., and the train operator used his horn to alert police, according to the sources. As the fight heated up, Andre Boyce, 28, allegedly put the other man in a headlock and hurled him to the No. 1 train tracks. The victim hit his head as he fell.
In January 2022, consultant and advocate for the homeless Michelle Alyssa Go was shoved into the path of a subway train as she waited at the Times Square station. Cops said a vagrant, Simon Martial, 61, pushed her, targeting Go at random. She fell beneath a moving train and died at the scene. Martial surrendered to police and admitted what he did, police sources said.
In October, shocked witnesses pulled a man to safety after he was shoved into the path of an oncoming Bronx subway train in an unprovoked attack, cops said.
Surveillance video released by the NYPD showed the suspect pacing back and forth on the Manhattan-bound No. 6 train platform at the E. 149th St. station in Mott Haven before pushing the victim in the back.
Augustin said the attack he suffered has left him shaken for good.
“This is my last time in the subway. I’m going to take Uber because I can afford it,” he vowed.