As the Q train raced across the East River on a sunny Sunday morning, with the Lower Manhattan skyline shimmering through the windows, a man paced the aisle of the last car.
Dmitry Glivinskiy, a vocal coach sitting in the back of a car with headphones on, heard what he thought was a crack of firecrackers. He looked up and saw a man standing in the middle of the car, gun in hand.
Police later said the gunman fired one shot – without provocation – in the chest of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez and killed him.
When other passengers ran to the back of the car and gathered, Mr. Glivinskiy, 34, called 911.
“At that point, you were really stuck,” he said. “You don’t know what to do. And you hope for the best.”
As the train pulled into Canal Street, the gunman fled just as police officers flooded the station, reacting to the latest attack in a series of random attacks, clearly visible in the tram. underground has shaken New York City’s confidence in a system vital to its life and its economy.
The Q ship’s attack happened after mass shooting last month on train N injured at least 23 people and jostling death of a woman in Times Square station in January.
The violent episodes present a huge setback for Mayor Eric Adams, who faces an increasingly impatient public as he struggles to curb violence on the streets and subways to fulfill his word. central promise in his campaign.
He has find a way to reassure the riders by trying to relocate homeless people living in the subway and put hundreds more police on the system.
Fatal attacks are rare on city buses and subways. According to the most recent police statistics, three people have been killed in the transit system this year, compared with four at this time last year. And major felonies on buses and subways make up just 2% of the city’s total crime, about the same level as before the pandemic. the number of riders is 40 percent lower.
The mayor, who has urged New Yorkers to return to public transit and to offices to revive the city’s economy, lamented the “horrific” crime on Sunday and vowed that the guns will be captured.
He said his administration would continue to increase the police presence on the subways. “What is the goal and what we will continue to do is the integrity of the police officers,” he said.
Enriquez, of Brooklyn, was shot in the chest at about 11:40 a.m. as the train was traveling from downtown Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, according to the Police Department.
At a news conference inside Canal Street station, Kenneth Corey, department head, said there had not been any interaction between the victim and his assailant prior to the shooting.
“According to eyewitnesses, the suspect was pacing back and forth in the same carriage and, unprovoked, drew a gun at the victim at close range as the train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge,” Sheriff Corey said. .
Police said officers and emergency medical technicians attempted to resuscitate the victim after the train pulled into Canal Street, but he died at Bellevue Hospital. No one else was injured, according to Sheriff Corey.
Police said the attacker fled into the street and has not been arrested. He is described as a dark-skinned, shaggy man, wearing a dark sweater, orange T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and white sneakers.
Sheriff Corey said investigators were reviewing footage from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s surveillance camera. He enlisted the public’s help in locating the gunman.
The shooting comes less than six weeks after 10 people were shot and at least 13 others injured – but no one was killed – on an N train in Brooklyn, in the worst subway attack in history. many decade. Frank R. James, 62 years old, arrested on federal terrorism charges after leading the administration in a 30-hour manhunt.
In January, Michelle Go, 40, was pushed in front of a train car and killed in an attack she never saw coming. The suspect, Simon Martial, mentally ill and homeless and has been considered unfit to stand trial.
After Sunday’s shooting, Governor Kathy Hochul said on Twitter that her office was working with the transit regulator and had offered to help police with the investigation.
“My heart breaks for the family of the victim,” she said. “Everybody deserves to feel safe on our subway. I will continue to fight to make that happen. ”
On Sunday afternoon, the train where the shooting occurred was still stopping at Canal Street station. Three uniformed police officers were guarding the last car, which was separated by yellow police tape stretched between the handrails.
K. Arsenault Rivera, 30, an author, said she was on the train to 34th Street, where she planned to transition on her way to a friend’s newborn bathroom in New Jersey.
As the train pulled into Canal Street, she said, tension was overwhelming. She realized something was amiss when people started applying to get off the train. Rumors of gun sightings reached her car as people stood in the doorway filming with their phones.
Then a man ran from the back of the train with his finger to his temple, she said. He said someone had been shot in the last car and urged the passengers to leave the train.
Arsenault Rivera said police officers rushed downstairs and urged passengers to get off the train, and she “reserved a seat” up the steps and took a taxi home.
“It was a pretty annoying thing,” she said. “If I had started somewhere else, I would have been right there.”
Matthew Chavan, 32, of Brooklyn, said he was on the train to go to lunch with a traveling companion. He was sitting in the third car from the front of the train when he noticed that the people disembarking on Canal Street had suddenly stopped. There was shouting, and people started running towards the exit, he said.
The car he was in started to clean up, and he and his companion hit the road.
“We were asked what was going on, and my answer was, ‘People don’t run away for no reason,’” he said.
Mr Chavan blamed the erosion of safety on a focus on police tactics that he felt failed to stem the tide of violence. He said he was afraid of what would happen when The Supreme Court rules on a case challenged New York’s law that limits who can carry a gun in public.
Gun rights activists challenge the law, one of the strictest in the country, arguing that it violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Mr. Chavan shared the fear of many elected Democrats in the city, who predicted that a Supreme Court decision to overturn the law would lead to worse gun violence.
Around the Canal Street station on Sunday afternoon, New Yorkers learning they couldn’t take Q Street due to the shooting responded by hunching over their shoulders, shaking their heads and gasping for air.
Yanni Reed, who works in radio advertising, was denied entrance to her familiar subway train by an officer. She said the news made her “paranoid” while riding the subway.
“Well, one more shot, it was crazy,” she said. “This is too much – we can’t be numb to this.”
Marcello Leone, 65, a bartender in Little Italy, said the news made him commit to more vigilance on the subway.
“Open your eyes, don’t sleep,” he said.
Nate Schweber contribution report.
