An argument between two groups of teenagers riding the New York City subway escalated into a deadly shooting on Monday, leaving one man killed and five others wounded.
The gunfire broke out on an elevated train platform in the Bronx at around 4:30pm, a time when stations throughout the city are filled with children coming home from school and many workers are beginning their evening commute.
A 34-year-old man was killed, police said. The wounded included a 14-year-old girl, 15-year-old boy and three adults, ages 28, 29 and 71. Some of the victims were believed to have been involved in the dispute, while others simply were bystanders waiting for the train, police said. Four of the injuries were described as serious.
"We don’t believe this was a random shooting. We do not believe that this was an individual indiscriminately firing into a train or a train station," NYPD’s chief of transit, Michael Kemper, said at a news conference.
A hunt is now on for at least one shooter, who fled the scene. Police did not rule out the possibility that more than one person fired shots.
The gunfire sent passengers rushing off the train while people on the platform scrambled for safety.
“The train was coming and there were two kids yelling,” witness Efrain Feliciano, 61, told the Daily News. “There were at least six shots.”
“I saw sparkles as the bullets hit the wall,” he added. “A woman was holding a child screaming.”
Video from television news helicopters showed the train stopped at the station and orange evidence cones on the platform, which is three stops north of Yankee Stadium.
“It was total pandemonium,” Luis Rodriguez, 34, told The New York Post. “It makes you scared to ride the train.”
Fear and reality
Fear of violence on the city's subway system has risen after a string of headline-making incidents in recent years, including a mass shooting by a man who randomly fired on people aboard a train in Brooklyn in 2022, leaving several hurt.
However, overall crime in New York City has actually been plummeting since a spike at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of people shot citywide dropped 39% last year compared to 2022, while the number of killings on the subway system also dropped last year from 10 to 5, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority statistics.
Calling in to radio station 1010 WINS after Monday afternoon's shooting, Mayor Eric Adams touted the work police have done to get guns off the street and reduce violence. But he acknowledged that more needs to be done to make people comfortable riding a system still coming back from major ridership losses during the worst pandemic years.
“Not only people must be actually safe, but what we have done in lowering crime, they must feel safe,” Mayor Eric Adams said on 1010 Wins radio, “and something like this can send shockwaves throughout our entire system.”
