A 65-year-old woman whose leg was broken in three places after a mentally ill stranger shoved her onto the tracks at a Bronx subway station in an unprovoked attack blasted city leaders for failing to protect riders as the number of assaults in New York City’s subway system has spiked by 10% this year.
“The situation has got to stop,” an outraged Lydia Zuniga told the Daily News from her hospital bed. “The city isn’t doing anything regarding crazy people. They’re running the subways, and nobody’s doing anything about it.”
The attack comes as the NYPD fights a 10% jump in felony assaults in the city’s subway system as of Aug. 23.
Cops have investigated 429 assaults in transit this year, 41 more than the 388 reported this time last year. While assaults in the subways were up, random attacks were down by 8%, from 69 last year to 63, police said.
Zuniga, who herself works in public safety at New York University, was waiting for a Manhattan-bound No. 5 train at the elevated E. 180th St. station near Morris Park Ave. in West Farms at about 1:45 p.m. Thursday when her attacker stormed up to her, she said.
“I just twisted a little bit to see if the train was coming, and, next thing I know, I was flying onto the tracks,” she recalled. “The person that pushed me must have been full of anger because I felt that the push that (he) gave me was enormous.”
Zuniga said her attacker, who was sporting a white baseball cap and headphones, didn’t say a word to her as he shoved her. She had never seen him before, either, she said.
“He was angry at somebody, but not at me,” she recalled. “I don’t know the person. I don’t even know who he was or exactly what he looked like.”
“I don’t get it,” she added. “This is my routine every day to go to work. All I was doing was going to work.”
A good Samaritan named Malik jumped down to the elevated tracks to make sure she didn’t slip through as other witnesses alerted station workers.
A train was entering the station, but because of ongoing train maintenance, it was coming in slowly and was able to stop before hitting her and her savior, Zuniga remembered.
“I saw the headlights and everything,” she said. “If it wasn’t for Malik holding me up, I honestly don’t know what would have happened.”
“Honestly, he saved me,” she said.
Medics rushed her to St. Barnabas Hospital, where doctors told her that her left leg was broken in three places.
“I’m in a lot of pain,” she said. “It’s going to be a long haul.”
The man who shoved her casually walked out of the station. Police took him into custody on Friday after he took himself to a psychiatric clinic, confessing to what he did and seeking help, police sources said.
Criminal charges were pending as he undergoes a psychiatric evaluation, an NYPD spokesman said.
Zuniga, however, believes the man who shoved her should be behind bars.
“You should go into jail for attempted murder, not in the psychiatric ward (where) all of a sudden they’re gonna release you and put you on meds? No, it’s a crime,” she said. “I’m 65 years old. Nothing like this has ever happened to me, and all of a sudden, I got to change my life because of some fool that thinks that they’re sick. I’m angry. I don’t know what else to say.”
NYC has struggled with the care and treatment of the mentally ill for years. The shutdown of large-scale psychiatric institutions left a void in the system as the community-based care network that was supposed to fill the gap is widely seen as inadequate and underfunded.
Zuniga challenged Mayor Mamdani to visit her in the hospital to see firsthand how innocent people are being hurt in the subways.
“If the mayor has enough guts, then he’d come and see me,” she said. “I would like to talk to him because the city is not safe. The mayor needs to do something and needs to do something quickly because this cannot continue.”
The attack on Zuniga follows a series of high-profile random attacks underground.
Last month, an ex-con out on parole was arrested for shoving a 70-year-old woman onto the tracks inside the 57th St.-Seventh Ave. train station in Midtown on July 18, cops said. Then, in April, Anthony Griffin, 44, was shot dead by police for slashing three elderly victims with a machete and calling himself “Lucifer” at Grand Central Station.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A machete is pictured on the subway platform after cops shot and killed a man who slashed three elderly commuters on the uptown 4/5/6 subway platform inside Grand Central Terminal on April 11, 2026. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Besides assaults, robberies in the subway system saw a 6% increase this year, according to recent NYPD statistics.
Out of the 429 assaults in the city’s subway system this year, about a third — 126 — were committed against police officers and MTA employees, officials said.
This year’s increase in assaults coincides with a roughly 9% increase in ridership, up to 3.5 million from 3.2 million in August last year.
In March 2025, MTA’s security head Michael Kemper said annual increases in assaults, felony assaults in particular, is a perennial issue, in large part fueled by attacks on police patrolling the transit system.
“Contributing to the rise in felony assaults is the disturbing and unacceptable dramatic increase in the number of NYPD cops being assaulted, all while proactively patrolling the subway system, focusing on and enforcing fare evasion, quality of life offenses [and] other offenses,” Kemper told the MTA board.
The security head said 31% of all felony assaults in the system in 2024 were on cops.
