3
COURIER LIFE, APRIL 15-21, 2022
Heroic transit
workers evacuated
riders fleeing
subway shooting
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A pair of transit workers
evacuated riders fleeing the
subway attack in Brooklyn via
another train Tuesday morning,
possibly saving the straphangers
from their attacker,
according to MTA officials.
When a man detonated a
smoke device and opened fire at
passengers on an N train entering
36th Street Station in Sunset
Park just before 8:30 am, a
quick-thinking motorman and
conductor of an R train on the
local track on the opposite side
of the platform got the commuters
to safety, said MTA chairperson
and CEO Janno Lieber
in media interviews.
“MTA workers showed up
right through the dark days
of COVID and they showed up
again today, when they made
the fast move to move that R
train out of the station when
they saw that there was something
bad going on and they
got a lot of people out of harm’s
way very quickly,” Lieber told
1010 WINS.
“Kudos to them. I’ve spoken
to both the conductor and
the motorman who are on that
train to give them a big thank
you for all New Yorkers,” the
transit chief added.
The attack that injured
nearly two-dozen riders on
their morning commute on
April 12 caused service to be
suspended on the D, N, and R
trains in parts of Brooklyn
and Manhattan for the day.
By late Tuesday afternoon,
subway service was running
on nearly all of the system, albeit
with some “little gaps,”
Lieber told the radio station.
“We got little gaps,” he said.
“But we are running very robust
service on almost every
every part of the system.”
Meanwhile, the mass transit
agency issued a memo to
subway crews telling them to
be vigilant amid heightened
security in the system.
Straphangers stumble out of a
smoke-filled train at 36th Street
station in Brooklyn on April 12.
Will B. Wylde via Twitter
“All Service Delivery employees
are reminded that they
must continue to be vigilant
to maintain a state of heightened
security within the subway
system,” read the message
signed by chief officer for field
operations Paul McPhee.
“This incident is a reminder
that all Service Delivery
employees must remain
vigilant and immediately report
anything unusual to the
Rail Control Center.”
MTA’s in-house rider advocates
lauded the transit workers
and riders who helped each
other out during the morning
crisis, while hoping the incident
wouldn’t set back the
slowly-recovering recent ridership
figures, which have remained
above 3 million trips
every weekday last week.
“We thank the good Samaritans,
transit workers, and
first responders who came to
the aid of victims during today’s
events,” read the joint
statement by Lisa Daglian, executive
director of the Permanent
Citizens Advisory Committee
and Andrew Albert,
chairperson of the New York
City Transit Riders Council
and MTA board member.
“We hope that this is a oneoff
incident and does not deter
riders from returning to transit
as a concerted effort continues
to improve safety underground.”
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Sunset Park, which sits along
the Brooklyn waterfront between
Bay Ridge to the south and Park
Slope to the north, is home to
large, working-class Asian and
Hispanic communities, with dozens
of shops and restaurants making
up Brooklyn’s bustling Chinatown
within the neighborhood.
The tight-knit community rallied
to take care of it own during the
pandemic, which left many of the
area’s older immigrant population
struggling as city resources
failed to materialize.
“Everyone was getting on, we
still didn’t know what happened,
there was confusion, it was just
a scary moment,” said 15-yearold
John Butsikares, who was on
the subway headed to school at
the time of the attack. “The train
conductor was yelling for medical
assistance at 25th Street, and
then on 36th he was telling everyone
to get on the train.”
Everyone was told to evacuate
at 25th Street, a few blocks north
of the 36th Street stop,
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority halted service
of the D/N/R lines in all of
Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan
as the investigation continued,
and other delays occurred.
“It sucks because people need
to go to work and they won’t be
able to today,” said Jeffrey Valencia,
who lives around the corner
from the station and works
at nearby Industry City. “It does
make me feel a little nervous
knowing the guy who started
this could still be around.”
“We are truly fortunate that
this was not significantly worse
than it is,” Sewell said at a Tuesday
afternoon press conference
at 1 Police Plaza.
As the N express train pulled
into the 36th Street station in
Sunset Park at 8:24 a.m., the onboard
shooter put on a gas mask,
pulled a canister out of his bag
that filled the train with smoke,
and fired at commuters in the
train car and on the platform,
Sewell told reporters. The suspect
fired 33 shots in all, police
said. Cops also found a Glock 17
9 mm handgun, extended magazines,
gasoline, a hatchet, and
fireworks at the scene. Officials
say it’s clear that the suspect
boarded the train with the intent
to do harm.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno
Lieber praised transit workers
and riders for helping out fellow
New Yorkers in crisis.
“On 9/11 I stood on 4th Avenue
and watched people, New Yorkers,
come back from that tragedy.
I watched New Yorkers help each
other and storekeepers walk out
and give people water,” Lieber
said during the midday presser.
“That was the same thing we
saw on the platform today. We
saw New Yorkers in a difficult
situation, an emergency, helping
each other,” he added. “That’s the
subway riders, that’s who New
Yorkers are.”
Edwin Perez, a school psychologist
intern at neighboring
special needs school P721K, said
he saw the immediate aftermath
of the shooting.
“I started looking out the window,
then I saw a lot of police
cars, I saw a lot of people looking
fidgety or disoriented,” the Williamsburg
resident told Brooklyn
Paper. “I thought something
was happening but I got to keep
working, but maybe 20 minutes
after that we heard an announcement
from the school saying
there was an incident at the 36
Street station and we were gonna
be in sheltering mode.”
Perez said his school was in
lockdown from about 8:50 am to
2:20 pm Tuesday and, while the
kids seemed unfazed by what
was happening outside of their
classrooms, teachers and other
faculty were rattled by the incident.
Perez himself was at the
36th Street station 20 minutes
prior to the shooting, and now
feels especially uneasy about his
commute to work.
“It’s horrifying that New York
has to go through something like
this. This is the capital of the
world,” he said. “It should be very
safe for us and for everyone.”
Additional reporting by Kevin
Duggan, Paul Frangipane,
Meaghan McGoldrick and Lloyd
Mitchell
“It’s horrifying that
New York has to go
through something like
this. This is the capital
of the world. It shouold
be very safe for us and
for everyone.”