Rush hour commuters were left rattled Friday by the bloody subway shooting on a packed Brooklyn A train that left a 36-year-old man fighting for his life.
Hannah Mortenga of Manhattan, who takes a C train to get to her retail job, saw the video of panicked straphangers running to the other side of the train car during the 4:45 p.m. clash and realized at any moment she could have been one of those victims.
“It’s intimidating,” she said about the ongoing violence in the city’s subway system, which could spark up at any moment. “You know once you’re on [the train] there’s nothing you can really do. It’s like a plane.
“I think there’s been a lot of really weird people on the actual subway,” she said. “I don’t like feeling uncomfortable on the subways.”
NYPD detectives and prosecutors on Friday were trying to figure out how to charge a 32-year-old man who somehow managed to get the gun away from the older aggressor before shooting him in the head during the 4:45 p.m. clash Thursday on an uptown train heading into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn St. station.
A woman who was with the younger man and sliced the victim’s back with a blade remained at large and was being actively sought by police.
On Thursday night MTA Chair Janno Leiber said that the panicked straphangers caught on video cowering on the opposite side of the subway car were the “real victims.”
“They’re having a harrowing time because they’re on a train with someone with a gun,” he said.
The Thursday afternoon bloodbath was the ninth shooting to take place in the city subway system this year, a startling statistic that has left many commuters on edge. By this time last year, there was just one shooting.
Last week, Gov. Hochul announced the deployment of 750 members of the National Guard and 250 state and MTA police officers to city subway stations to conduct bag searches as violent incidents continue across the system.
No National Guard members were seen at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station Thursday, but there were several NYPD cops who were on the mezzanine level and ran onto the platform when they heard the shots, police and MTA officials said.
“These cops went the extra step when there was a shooting,” Lieber said at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station Friday morning. “This could have been something much worse, but as people rushed up the stairs, they ran down the stairs.”
Mayor Adams on Friday said crime was down in the subway system, but admitted that perception plays an important role in public safety.
“Public safety is not only the stats. Public safety is how people feel,” Adams said on WPIX Friday. “I can say that crime is down in our subway system and that crime is down in the city and we’re the safest big city in America — but that means nothing if people don’t feel that.”
Adams believes the aggressor in Thursday’s shooting was suffering from “mental health illness.”
“When you look at that video, you’ll see the nexus between someone who appears, from what I saw, to be dealing with severe mental health illness, sparking a dispute on our subway system,” Adams said on 77 WABC. “This just really reinforces what I have been attempting to do. You gotta give us more power, Albany, to deal with involuntary removals for those who are dealing with severe mental health illness.”
