NEW YORK (AP) — A man fatally shot another man in the chest on a moving New York City subway train Sunday, police said. No one else was wounded.
The shooting came shortly before noon on a Q train that was traveling over the Manhattan Bridge, police said. The 48-year-old victim died at a hospital.
At a briefing, Chief of Department Kenneth Corey told reporters the shooting appeared be a random attack, which occurred while the victim was seated in the last car of the train heading from Brooklyn into Manhattan.
“According to witnesses, the suspect was walking back and forth in the same train car and without provocation, pulled out a gun and fired it at the victim at close range,” the chief said.
The shooter fled after the train arrived at the Canal Street station in Manhattan. Police were reviewing security video to try to identify him, Corey said.
Recent subway crime has set New Yorkers on edge. A man opened fire inside a Brooklyn subway train last month, wounding 10 people. The alleged shooter faces terrorism and other charges. In January, a woman was pushed to her death in front of a subway train by a stranger.
Since taking office Jan. 1, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has made cracking down on violent crime a chief focus of his administration.
The former New York City police captain rode the subway to City Hall on his first day as mayor. He later said he didn’t feel safe on the train after encountering a yelling passenger and several homeless people, and said the city needs to tackle “actual crime” and “the perception of crime.”
Most of the violence the city has experienced in recent months has not been in the subways but in neighborhoods, particularly in communities of color. But attacks on the subway, a vital network millions of New Yorkers rely upon, loom large in public perceptions of safety.