Suspect being questioned in deadly NYC subway push

A 58-year-old New York City subway passenger was killed on Monday after he was pushed onto the tracks of an onrushing train in Manhattan by a man who had been mumbling to himself as he walked along the platform, The New York Times reported.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne says investigators recovered security video showing a man fitting the description of the assailant working with street vendors near Rockefeller Center.

Police went there Tuesday and took him into custody.

The victim, Ki-Suck Han, tried to climb back onto the platform after he was pushed, but did not make it; he was struck by a southbound R train in the 49th Street station. He was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, the Times report said.

The police released a brief video from a surveillance camera in which the attacker is seen and heard cursing at the victim and telling him to stand in line “and wait for the R train.”

After the incident, the assailant fled and remained at large Tuesday morning. The Police Department described the attacker as a black man in his mid-20s.

On Monday night, two police officials and a priest were seen escorting a woman believed to be the victim’s wife from a Queens apartment to a van. They made no comment to reporters outside, the Times report said.

She later told the New York Post she and her husband had argued before the tragedy. She tried to call him after their 11 a.m. fight, but he never picked up, she told the Post.

The paper said one of its freelance photographers was on the platform as the ordeal unfolded. Umar Abbasi said he tried to warn the subway operator by flashing his camera. One of his photos shows Han on the tracks, arms on the platform, looking at the train as it bears down on him.

Subway pushes are unusual. Among the more high-profile cases was the January 1999 death of Kendra Webdale. A former mental patient admitted he shoved her to her death.

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