During the Presidents Day holiday, a 58-year-old man was arrested for allegedly chasing another man with an ax around 12:30 am at a Brooklyn subway stop where police were stationed. The victim, who managed to dodge the axe, asked why the attacker was staring at him, police said.
About two hours later, a man allegedly hit a woman in the face with a metal object aboard a 4 train near the 167th Street station in the Bronx, police said. The woman, who refused medical attention, told officers the man lashed out at her after asking her to stop talking to a friend of his. No arrests have been made in that case.
These two cases were the most recent after of a violent weekend in which at least six were reported stabbings. Cases that come after Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul released the Metro Safety Plan on Friday that went into effect Monday.
Two teenage girls were arrested in one such stabbing attack and are accused of stabbing a 74-year-old man in the face, pushing him to the ground and taking his cell phone Saturday afternoon after he argued with them over smoking on a train. .
And while the city has oscillated in recent years between responding to concerns about subway crime and complaints about heavy-handed police, the cases continue.
For example, in subsequent weeks, a woman was pushed in front of a train and died in Times Square and a man was pushed onto the tracks and injured in a major Lower Manhattan hub.
Donovan, the MTA spokesman, said that while investigations into the weekend attacks are in their early stages, they “underscore the urgent need” for a new security plan.
Mayor’s spokesman Fabien Levy, however, advised New Yorkers not to confuse “isolated acts of violence on the subway” with “the problems of helping the homeless that the mayor’s plan directly addresses.”
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