Police Search for Attacker in Fatal Subway Push
NEW YORK – New York City police detectives Monday canvassed the area around a Bronx subway station where a rider was pushed to his death on the tracks Sunday morning.
Investigators are hoping to find anyone who might be able to identify a man seen leaving the station.
Elsewhere, police officers fanned out with wanted posters of the man, offering rewards for information.
But by Monday afternoon, no major leads had developed, nor had tips come in from the posters or from surveillance video released late Sunday by the police. The video showed in some detail the man – at this point wanted only for questioning – as he walked from the 167th Street subway station, exited a Bronx bus and smoked a cigarette near a deli in the minutes after the attack.
The rider, Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, had been waiting for a downtown D train with his wife, both immigrants from Hong Kong, as they made their weekly Sunday trip down to Chinatown for dim sum and shopping.
But shortly before 8:45 a.m., as the train roared into the station, Kwok, 61, was shoved from behind, the police said, and launched into the path of the train. The brakes howled and the train came to a rest after at least two cars passed over his body. He died at the scene.
Witnesses described seeing a man fleeing up the stairs and hearing Kwok’s wife, Yow Ho Lee, shouting after him in the little English that she knew: “Push, push!”
The death of Kwok, who worked in a kitchen supply factory until recently and had two sons, touched on the fears of many New York City subway riders, who crowd among strangers amid onrushing trains as a matter of daily necessity.
On the Monday morning subway commute, newspapers were turned to bold stories of the seemingly random attack in the Bronx as thoughts turned to who could have committed such a crime, and why.
Lee, who speaks Cantonese and limited English, told detectives that no words were spoken before the fatal push.
On Monday, Chief Joseph Fox, speaking at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority meeting, expressed sympathy to the family of Kwok.
“This will be a 24/7 operation until we identify who did this and bring them to custody,” Fox said.