New York City police are investigating an unprovoked attack in which an assailant repeatedly struck a man in the head with a metal pipe at a Queens subway station. This was just the latest example of violent crime in the city’s transit system.
The suspect attacked the 31-year-old victim at the Queensboro Plaza station just before 1 a.m. Saturday, police said, and then fled. The assault left the victim unconscious; he was transported to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center where he was treated for several lacerations on his head and was said to be in stable condition.
The incident comes as subway crime is up 22.6 percent since the start of the year compared with the same period of time in 2023, police said.
Days earlier, a Brazilian tourist was stabbed in another unprovoked attack at the Queens Plaza station. The assailant ran up behind the 29-year-old victim and sliced his neck around 10:30 a.m.
On Wednesday afternoon, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the thigh at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn. The boy was transported to NYU Langone Hospital where he was said to be in stable condition. That same day, a homeless man punched a 58-year-old female MTA worker on a Lower Manhattan subway platform. When a bystander stepped in to help, the homeless man attacked him, too.
The day before that, a man was playing the electric cello in the mezzanine of the Herald Square station when a woman walked up behind him and wordlessly hit him over the head with his own metal water bottle.
New York City mayor Eric Adams and New York governor Kathy Hochul have deployed additional police officers to oversee the subway system.
“With hundreds more officers surged into transit, 15,000 cameras in stations, and thousands more cameras on trains assisting the NYPD, anyone breaking the law in transit can count on getting caught. Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams’ Cops, Cameras and Care initiative produced a drop in serious crimes overall last year. It’s now up to prosecutors and the courts to ensure real consequences so the same people aren’t free to keep coming back to prey on transit workers and riders,” New York City Transit President Richard Davey said.