Police are on guard in front of a subway station in lower Manhattan, where the suspect fled after fatally shooting a man on May 22. Dakota Santiago / New York Times News Service
A man wanted for an apparently unprovoked fatal shooting on a New York subway train was arrested on Tuesday, hours after authorities posted his name and photo on social media and called on the public to help find him.
Andrew Abdullah, 25, was expected to be charged with the death of Daniel Enriquez, 48. The legal aid company, which represents him, said it was just beginning to review the evidence and urged the public not to speculate on the case.
“Mr. Abdullah deserves vigorous representation from his lawyer, and this will provide the Legal Aid Society,” the organization said in a statement.
Enriquez was shot while heading for brunch Sunday morning, about six weeks after 10 people were shot dead in an attack on another subway train.
Enriquez’s sister Griselda Ville called on the city on Tuesday to fight crime more effectively.
“Please don’t let this happen to another New Yorker,” she told Fox News. “I don’t want my brother to be just a fleeting name in the media, a fleeting name in our normal state after the pandemic.
Court records show that 25-year-old Abdullah has two criminal cases opened in New York, one in Brooklyn, resulting in the theft of a vehicle on April 24, and the other for an alleged attack in Manhattan in 2020. Reports of comments were left to lawyers mu.
“This horrific crime should never have happened,” Police Commissioner Kitchent Sewell said at a briefing on Tuesday.
Police said witnesses said the shooter walked with the last car of the Q-line train heading from Brooklyn to Manhattan, pulled out a gun and shot Enriquez at close range. The shooter escaped after the train arrived on Canal Street in Manhattan.
Police have asked the public for help in identifying him by posting on Twitter photos of a large man wearing a hood wearing a hot day and Abdullah’s name and photo on Tuesday morning.
The Legal Aid Society said it had been trying since Monday night to arrange for him to surrender in the subway shooting, but instead the authorities made a “completely unjustified and inappropriate” decision to keep him out of the organization’s office. An inquiry has been sent to the police.
“We need all eyes on this,” tweeted New York Police Commissioner Kichant Sewell.
Enriquez worked for Goldman Sachs’ global investment research department, where CEO David Solomon called him a dedicated and beloved employee who “embodies our culture of collaboration and excellence.”
A child of Mexican American parents, Enriquez spent his early childhood in Brooklyn, before his family moved to California and then to Seattle, his partner Adam Pollack told the New York Post. Weil said both moves were caused by violence in the family’s neighborhoods in New York and Southern California.
Enriquez returned to New York in the mid-1990s to pursue a master’s degree in Latin American studies at New York University. His study yen didn’t stop there – during the coronavirus pandemic, he learned to play the guitar and speak Portuguese and Italian, his family and partner said.
“He was constantly in a state of self-improvement,” son-in-law Glen Weil told Fox News.
The eldest of five children, Enriquez cared for his siblings, his sister said. Just about an hour before he was killed, Enriquez sent text messages to his siblings advising them to check on their parents, who have health problems, she said.
The seemingly arbitrary shooting further shook a city that is already on the brink of public safety. Many types of crime have recovered after declining sharply earlier in the pandemic, when people stayed at home. And concerns about crime have grown.
In the first five months of 2022, the number of shootings in the city decreased slightly compared to the same period a year earlier, and the number of homicides has decreased by 12% so far compared to last year. But New York is still aiming for its second-highest homicide since 2011, after nearly a decade at record lows.
In terms of violent crime, the city remains significantly safer now than it was in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
According to a survey by Quinnipiac University published this month, crime is the main concern of voters in the city. It surveyed 1,249 registered city voters and has a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points.
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is campaigning for promises to make the city safer, said his administration will assess how it deploys staff in the sprawling subway system.
There were no police officers in the car where Enriquez was shot, Adams said.
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