The homeless suspect accused of pushing a 40-year-old Asian woman onto the subway tracks in Times Square in an apparently unprovoked horror used both hands to push the victim, according to a criminal complaint unsealed at the defendant’s arraignment. on Wednesday.
Michelle Alyssa Go had been standing on the Q/R platform near 42nd Street and Broadway on Saturday morning when the 61-year-old suspect, who police say has a history of mental illness, allegedly reached out with both hands and pushed her from behind. .
Go was hit by the train, prosecutors said. They add that the attack appeared completely unprovoked. The woman was looking at her phone at the time the suspect allegedly pushed her, prosecutors said.
That suspect is Martial Simon. Police initially released his name as Simon Martial, but the arraignment judge referred to him as “Mr. Martial” and the defendant’s sister indicated that his name was Martial Simon, not the other way around.
Simon fled the scene after the attack, but later turned himself in to authorities. Prosecutors say he admitted his guilt in three separate conversations with traffic officers, detectives and assistant district attorneys from the Manhattan office.
The video also placed him at the scene and a witness identified him in a series of photographs, prosecutors told the judge on Wednesday when they requested preventive detention. Simon has two prior violent felony convictions, a 1999 attempted robbery and a 2019 attempted robbery. He also has a warrant for his arrest for violating his probation, authorities said.
Given these factors, prosecutors described pretrial detention as the least restrictive alternative to ensure he returns to court for his next hearing. The judge eventually ordered Simon’s pre-trial detention and ordered him to receive a psychiatric evaluation.
Prosecutors say they are still investigating whether racial bias may have motivated the attack in part, given the rise in crimes against Asian victims in the city early in the pandemic. Defense attorney Mitchell Schuman of NYC Defenders He said that if there is no evidence to indicate that at this time, the record should not mention it.
Martial is due back in court at the end of next month. He faces a single second-degree murder charge in Go’s death. It doesn’t appear that he pleaded guilty on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the public and official reaction to Go’s death has been swift and intense.
The MTA has said the attack should not have happened and called for more police and other resources in the transit system to help care for the mentally ill. He addressed Go’s murder a day ago during a question and answer session at an unrelated briefing. The agency said its workforce, like many others, has been hit by COVID-induced staffing shortages that have forced service cuts, among other issues.
Whether or how much that played a role in Go’s demise may never be known, but the MTA’s challenges come amid a pandemic that has led to a surge in anti-Asian crime across New York City and, separately, it further exposed the crisis of the mentally ill and homeless on the subways, prompting further calls for action.
Mayor Eric Adams, who has strongly condemned the attack, in his first week in office held a joint news conference with Governor Kathy Hochul in which they both promised to increase homeless outreach throughout the city’s subway system. city, addressing a quality-of-life issue central to Adams’ push for workers to return to city offices.
In addition to that effort, Adams said New York City Police officers on patrol would also be tasked with entering the subway system and conducting visual inspections to identify potential public safety issues. Homeless outreach was still to be left to what the new mayor coined Safe Options and Support (SOS) teams.
Those multidisciplinary teams would be comprised of 8 to 10 professionals with experience ranging from social work to medicine and other related fields. The New York City Police also pledged to deploy hundreds more officers to the subways, an increase potentially designed to counter widespread perceptions of a transit system plagued by crime and people found to be homeless on the subways.
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