(NEW YORK) — A woman stabbed a 36-year-old man at the start of a New York City subway train dispute that culminated with the man getting shot and critically hurt, cellphone video from a fellow rider revealed, according to authorities.
The 36-year-old shooting victim is in critical but stable condition following the incident that unfolded on a northbound A train in Brooklyn around 4:45 p.m. Thursday, NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said at a Friday news conference.
The “extended video” showed a woman on the train, “apparently with the 32-year-old” who later fired the gun, Kemper said. “It looks like on that video, it captures her involved in the incident also. It looks like she had a sharp object and cut the 36-year-old male with that sharp object.”
The woman was with the 32-year-old suspect when he got into a verbal and then physical dispute with the shooting victim, possibly over a subway seat, police said.
The woman appeared to pull a sharp object out of her purse and stabbed the victim in the lower back, police said.
After he was stabbed, the 36-year-old man asked, “Did you stab me?” before pulling a gun from his jacket and asking again, “You stabbed me, right?” according to police.
The physical altercation continued, with the 32-year-old man then grabbing at the gun, police said. Multiple shots were fired as the train was pulling into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, Kemper said, with the victim being struck in the head.
Terrified commuters who were on the train and the station platform ducked for cover during the incident, according to video from the scene.
“There were multiple police officers in this station just feet away from when the train pulled in, who heard the shots and moved in right way,” Kemper said.
No one else was injured, police said.
The 32-year-old shooting suspect remains at the 84th Precinct, where police are conferring with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office about possible charges, police said Friday.
The woman’s status was not clear.
“This is a very active case,” Kemper said. “If anyone has any information, whether you were on the train, in the station or heard something, please call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.”
Mayor Eric Adams told NY1 on Friday that, when watching the video, “You will see there was a passenger that was merely just minding his business and using the transportation like millions of people do. And a person with severe mental health illness, what appears to be severe mental health illness, got engaged in a very violent way.”
“What one should do is attempt not to engage with the person,” Adams continued. “Just attempt to remain calm and don’t engage with them in a back-and-forth dispute in any way. Because you are dealing with someone that does not appear to be in the proper frame of mind, based on what I saw on that tape.”
The shooting comes one week after Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York National Guard troops and New York State Police troopers would be assisting city officers in protecting the subways.
A NYPD police transit bureau operates inside the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber decried the violence and reiterated his call for more gun control.
“The real victims are the people I saw in those videos,” he told reporters. “They are just trying to go about with their lives. Just get rid of the guns.”
ABC News’ Joyce Philippe and Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
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