At least five people were shot and injured Tuesday at a New York subway station during a morning rush hour attack that left injured commuters bleeding on a train platform.
Firefighters who responded to reports of smoke at 36th Street in the Sunset Park neighborhood found many people shot and unexploded ordnance, a spokesman for the fire department said.
The fire department told CBC News in an email that a total of 13 people were injured, but it is unclear how many of those people were shot or the specific nature of their injuries.
A New York City police spokesman told CBC News that the incident happened shortly before 8:30 a.m. ET on the neighborhood’s R-line subway.
Police are looking for a suspect described as a short man; he was described wearing a Metropolitan Transit Authority uniform and a gas mask, the spokesman said.
Witnesses report chaos, smoke
The NYPD tweeted that they had not found any “active explosive devices”.
A video of a passerby shows people lying on a subway platform amid what looked like small puddles of blood as a speaker’s message told everyone on the smoke-clouded platform to board a train. In the subway car, a man is lying on the floor, surrounded by others. In front of the station, a policeman shouted: “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Get out of the way!
A police dog was led by an officer at Times Square in Manhattan after the Brooklyn incident. (Gina Moon / Reuters)
“The door to the subway opened for me in distress. There was smoke and blood and people were screaming, “eyewitness Sam Carcamo told 1010 WINS radio, saying he saw a huge stream of smoke pouring out of the train after the door opened.
Danny Mastrogiorgio of Brooklyn had just left his son at school when he saw a crowd of passengers, including many wounded, running up the subway stairs at 25th Street in a panic. At least two had visible leg injuries, he said.
“It was crazy,” he told the Associated Press. “Nobody knew exactly what was going on.”
Police officers walked around 4th Avenue, the intersection of the station, asking witnesses if they were on the train. A sea of emergency lights could be seen from at least a dozen blocks where a police cordon was set up.
Recent subway attacks
New York Mayor Eric Adams, who revealed a positive COVID-19 result on Sunday, is receiving regular briefings on the incident, his spokesman said.
Governor Katie Hochul said in a statement that she had been informed of the situation and said her office would work with the transit authority and the police department while the investigation continues. President Joe Biden was also briefed on recent developments, and senior White House officials were in contact with Adams and New York Police Commissioner Kichant Sewell.
Tactical police officers arrive at the scene of a shooting at a subway station in New York’s Brooklyn neighborhood on Tuesday morning. (Brendan McDermid / Reuters)
The trains serving this station were delayed at rush hour in the morning.
The New York subway system has witnessed a series of recent attacks. An Asian American woman was pushed to her death in front of a train at Times Square subway station in January, while a man from Staten Island died last week after being stabbed at a Wall Street station.
In connection with an incident in 2017, which caused panic at the bus station in central Manhattan, a permanent resident of the United States from Bangladesh was sentenced to life in prison last year on federal charges. The man detonated an improvised explosive device, injuring the lives of several people nearby.
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