Woman dies after being pushed onto subway tracks in New York's Times Square

This article is more than 12 months old

Jan 16, 2022 08:54 am

An Asian woman was killed on Saturday (Jan 15) morning after she was pushed in front of an oncoming train at the Times Square station in New York city, The Straits Times reported.

The woman was standing on the platform around 9.30am waiting for a train to arrive at the station in Manhattan, the New York Times report carried by ST said.

As a Brooklyn-bound train pulled into the station, she was pushed onto the tracks and was struck by it. She died at the scene, the report quoted police as saying.

Her name was not immediately released. It was unclear whether she was targeted because she was Asian.

A man was arrested soon afterwards, police said.

More than 2,000 police officers are assigned to patrol the city's subway system and will lead more regular sweeps of it, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have said as they aim to lure back more riders.

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The state is also developing teams of social workers and medical professionals to work with officers to provide services to the thousands of homeless people living on the streets and on trains.

Mr Adams said he believed an underlying "perception of crime" had prompted worries.

Transit officials have emphasised that serious crimes in the system are at their lowest in decades. But ridership has also been much lower during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rate of crimes per million riders has risen since 2019.

High-profile attacks throughout the pandemic against Asian New Yorkers, along with other incidents, have also generated a flurry of news reports about violence.

In 2019, three murders were reported in the system, a number which doubled to six in 2020. Through November, six murders were also reported in 2021.