A 36-year-old man was shot with his own gun on a New York City subway Thursday as terrified riders took cover, screamed that there were babies onboard and begged for someone to open the train doors so they could get to safety.
While Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Oren Yaniv on Friday said the shooting “was shocking and deeply upsetting,” he added that “at this stage, evidence of self-defense precludes us from filing any criminal charges against the shooter.”
The incident on a northbound A train, which was captured on video, comes on the heels of a string of violent crimes on the city’s subway system that prompted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy a force of 1,000, including 750 National Guard, to increase security on the transit network.
Videos posted on social media show the unidentified 36-year-old man approaching a 32-year-old passenger and getting into a verbal dispute. The footage appears to show the 36-year-old ranting and yelling and threatening to beat up the 32-year-old.
The situation escalates when the 32-year-old man stands and puts his hands up, according to one video posted on X.
One passenger is heard saying, “there’s babies on here.” Several riders get up and move out of the way, the video shows.
The two men get into a physical fight and during the altercation, a woman is seen appearing to stab the 36-year-old man repeatedly in the back.
At a Friday morning news conference, police said it looked like the woman had a “sharp object and cut the 36-year-old male with that sharp object.”
Video shows the 36-year-old man bleeding and saying, “You stabbed me.”
The 36-year-old then walks over to his jacket and pulls out a firearm, the footage shows.
“Get down, all the way down, baby,” a female rider says before screaming repeatedly: “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”
Other passengers scream for the train doors to be opened. As riders flee, gunshots are heard.
Michael Kemper, the NYPD’s head of transit, said officers were aware of the videos circulating online.
At some point, the 36-year-old man lost control of the gun and was shot by the 32-year-old multiple times as the train pulled into the Schermerhorn Station, Kemper said Thursday.
Eyewitnesses recorded video showing a man on a stretcher being lifted into an ambulance outside the station.
Police officers were already at the station, Kemper added, and were on the scene in seconds. The 32-year-old man was questioned by detectives Thursday night, he said.
“The investigation into this tragic incident is ongoing,” Yaniv said Friday after announcing the Brooklyn DA’s Office doesn’t have plans to prosecute the shooter at this time.
New York City Council member Lincoln Restler, who represents the area, said on X: “This is a horrible tragedy & deeply unnerving to the millions of New Yorkers who take the subway every day.”
Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in the Friday news conference that the police deserved praise for a swift response
“Transit crime is 2% of the crime in the city of New York, but it has a huge disproportionate impact on people’s sense of safety because they’re in an environment where they can’t move around as easily,” he said.
The shooting came more than a month after surveillance video captured a man allegedly throwing lit containers of flammable liquid at a group of people on a New York City subway platform.
Police are still searching for the man in that incident.
To combat transit crime, more than 1,000 police officers were put in the city’s subway system in February, resulting in a 15.4% drop in crime compared to the same month last year, according to police statistics released earlier this month.
Robbery dropped 5% and grand larceny decreased 28.6% while incidents of felony assault stayed the same, according to the data.
Meanwhile, arrests in the transit system are up about 45%.