NYC subway conductor Jean Joseph caught he head out the prepare window to test that every one passengers had been safely aboard — when a deranged stranger punched him within the face, breaking his tooth.
After the random assault on the W prepare final week on the Ditmars Boulevard Station in Astoria, he has not been again to work.
“He was mumbling one thing about me closing the doorways,” mentioned Joseph of his attacker, who wore a white undershirt.
The MTA worker, 33, who’s initially from Haiti and about to turn into a brand new dad, speculates the person was offended he missed the prepare.
He’s nonetheless traumatized.
“I had a nightmare: I used to be sticking my head out the window, but it surely wasn’t an individual who hit me. It was a prepare,” he advised The Put up.
When the unhinged assailant heard the conductor’s name for assist come over the supervisor’s radio, he took off down the steps and out of the station, Joseph mentioned.
“I feel it’s tousled,” Joseph mentioned of the Could 2 assault, noting one other prepare conductor he works with was additionally just lately struck. “We’re mainly attempting to do our job and one thing like that simply occurs.”
His fiancee instantly considered a March 2024 incident in Brooklyn, during which a conductor was sliced within the neck whereas sticking his head out of the prepare automotive window.
“My child mom retains interested by that different conductor who received slashed within the neck,” he mentioned. “She’s additionally afraid for me.”
Joseph was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital for a minimize lip and two cracked tooth.
He isn’t positive when he’ll return to work.
“I’m afraid to stay my head out the window now,” he mentioned. “It’s a part of our process. Generally individuals’s garments or bag handles would possibly get caught within the doorways so we observe for his or her security.”
Police launched a wished poster of the attacker, however there have been no arrests.
Assault within the metropolis’s subway system rose 13%, to 208 to date this 12 months from 184 in the identical timeframe in 2024, based on police knowledge. Main transit crime — together with homicide — stays down 7.8% from 709 to 654, cops mentioned.
There have been 11 assaults on MTA staff to date this 12 months, two fewer than the 13 at this level in 2024, based on NYPD knowledge.
Assault on MTA staff hit a excessive of twenty-two in 2022, the information confirmed.
