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A subway passenger in New York City has been left critically injured after a stranger shoved him into the path of an oncoming train.
The 45-year-old man was standing on the platform, apparently looking at his phone, when he was suddenly pushed onto the tracks by a 23-year-old named as Kamel Hawkins.
He fell underneath the approaching train but miraculously survived.
As firefighters pulled him from between subway carriages, a bystander shouted: “He’s alive, he’s alive.” He was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The terrifying incident was captured by security cameras on Tuesday afternoon, as the city was preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
The motive for the attack, which happened at the city’s 18th Street subway station, was not known.
Hawkins has been charged with attempted murder and second-degree assault.
He has a substantial criminal record, US media reported. He was charged with assault in 2019 after attacking a police officer, and was also charged with assault and weapons possession in October last year.
The possibility of being pushed onto the tracks is a long-running nightmare for many New Yorkers. While it occurs rarely compared to the millions of rides each day, a push as recently as March killed a person in East Harlem.
Such attacks have happened elsewhere as well: a woman died after being shoved into a San Francisco commuter train this summer.
Tuesday’s attack also follows a recent spate of violence and random attacks on New York subways, which carried more than a billion passengers in 2024.
High-profile incidents include a woman being set on fire by a stranger while she was asleep on a train on Dec 22.
The victim, named as Debrina Kawam from New Jersey, died of her injuries following the attack in Brooklyn.
The 57-year-old had previously worked at the pharmaceutical giant Merck from 2000 until 2002, but her life subsequently took a downward turn and she had been living in a homeless shelter after moving to the city.
Sebastian Zapeta, 33, has been charged with murder and arson over her death.
He allegedly fanned the flames with a shirt, engulfing her in the blaze, before sitting on a platform bench and watching as she burned.
Initially thinking he was a bystander, footage showed police ushering Zapeta away from the scene as he watched the woman burn from the platform.
Zapeta, who is originally from Guatemala, was later arrested and is due to appear in court on Jan 7.
Identifying the victim proved to be a challenge. It took police until Dec 31 to identify Ms Kawam due to the nature of her death.
Ms Kawam had worked at the pharmaceutical giant Merck from 2000 until 2002, but her life at some point took a rocky turn. She had briefly been in a New York homeless shelter after moving to the city recently, the Department of Social Services said. It did not say when.
Police had an address for Ms Kawam in Toms River, a community on the Jersey Shore, and authorities said they notified her family about her Dec 22 death.
“Hearts go out to the family — a horrific incident to have to live through,” Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, said at an unrelated news briefing.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, a man attacked two people with a knife in Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station.
The victims both survived, while the man was arrested on assault and other charges, authorities said.
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, hours before the latest attack, Mr Adams insisted: “Crime is not surging in the subway system. You know, we have some high-profile incidents, and we’re really disturbed about it.”
He also said overall subway crime was low. However, concerns over crime prompted authorities to deploy more than 1,000 members of the National Guard to patrol the transit system during the holiday season.
The recent spate of attacks also prompted the Guardian Angels, a group of anti-crime volunteers, to begin patrolling the subway system for the first time since 2020.
The non-profit organisation was founded in 1979 to deal with a surge in crime in the city.
