A man was shot multiple times and seriously injured on a New York City subway train as it arrived at a busy station in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday, leaving evening rush hour passengers in a panic.
The shooting came a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard to the subway to help police search people for weapons after a series of high-profile crimes on city trains.
Authorities said Thursday’s shooting involved two men who police have not identified who got into an altercation, and then a physical fight, aboard the moving train shortly before 4:45 p.m.
One of the men, who police said was 36 years old, pulled out a gun and brandished it. The other man, 32, grabbed the gun and fired at the person he was arguing with, according to Michael Kemper, chief of the police department’s transit branch.
“The 32-year-old fired multiple shots, striking the 36-year-old,” Kemper said at a news conference.
Witnesses told police that the man who was shot was acting “aggressively and provocatively” toward the other before the fight broke out, Kemper said.
The shooting occurred at a stop where the NYPD has a small office, and officers were on the platform and quickly took the suspect into custody.
video posted on social media from an ABC News reporter who was aboard the train when it happened, showed passengers crouching on the floor as officers could be heard shouting on the platform.
“The real victims are the people I saw in those videos who were having a harrowing time because they were on a train with someone armed,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Janno Lieber said at a news conference.
Lieber said it was “outrageous” that someone would bring a gun onto a train and start a fight. He said it demonstrates the importance of current city and state efforts to get guns off the streets.
Last week Hochul deployed 750 National Guard members to assist city police in checking bags at the entrances of crowded train stations. The Democrat acknowledged that calling out uniformed service members was as much about sending a public message as it was about making mass transit safer.
According to police, violence in the subway is rare, with serious crimes declining nearly 3% from 2022 to 2023 and homicides decreasing from 10 to five in the same time frame.
But serious incidents have attracted attention, such as the slashing of a subway driver’s neck by a passenger last month.