New York Post

W’burg track shove

Bystanders rescue vic as attacker flees

- By TINA MOORE and JORGE FITZ-GIBBON tmoore@nypost.com

A straphange­r was shoved onto subway tracks at a Brooklyn subway station late Saturday — one of the latest victims of the Big Apple’s uptick in transit violence, police said.

The 47-year-old victim got into a dispute with his attacker at the Broadway and Marcy Avenue station in Williamsbu­rg shortly before midnight and was then pushed onto the track bed, according to cops.

Police said the two men may have known each other.

“Why did you come to this side?” the attacker allegedly told his victim. “I told you to . . .” before he shoved the man, police said.

The attacker fled the Brooklyn station while other transit passengers helped the victim back onto the platform.

The straphange­r suffered a cut to his head and was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatenin­g injuries.

Police described the attacker as 5 feet, 8 inches tall and dressed in a red sweater and black pants.

The incident is just the latest in a spate of transit attacks in recent months in which straphange­rs have been slashed and pushed onto subway tracks.

While overall transit crime is down nearly 60 percent in the first two months of this year compared to the same period in 2020, police said there have been 79 felony assaults in that span for 2021, compared to 78 last year.

During one terrifying week last month, police reported seven transit attacks, including five slashings, a woman shoved onto Bronx train tracks and an MTA bus driver smashed in the head with a two-by-four.

The NYPD reported Saturday that 51 people had been busted with weapons in the city subway system in the first two months of 2021. That’s a dip of 43 percent compared to the 83 weapon arrests over the same span in 2020 — but during a drop in ridership of as much as 70 percent over the past year due to coronaviru­s lockdown restrictio­ns.

The NYPD last month deployed an additional 640 cops to patrol the subways, but MTA officials have said they need nearly 1,000 more.

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