A 65-year-old woman is recovering after police say she was pushed onto the subway tracks in The Bronx in an unprovoked attack at the East 180th St. station. A suspect is in custody and charges are pending, according to the New York City Police Dept.<\/p>\n
The victim, Lydia Zu\u00f1iga, spoke by phone with NBC New York from her hospital bed at St. Barnabas Hospital, describing the moment she was shoved from behind on the northbound 5 platform in the Van Nest neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI turned around to see if the train was coming and next thing I know I just feel his hands behind my back that literally just pushed me,\u201d Zu\u00f1iga said.<\/p>\n
Zu\u00f1iga was headed to work at NYU, where she has been employed for 12 years as a security guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go to work every day, same time,\u201d Zu\u00f1iga said.<\/p>\n
She described the serious injuries she is recovering from.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy leg is broken in three places, I have three fractures. They operated to clean out, the blisters and the metal and things like that (are) on my leg from before,\u201d Zu\u00f1iga said. \u201cPreviously, I had a knee operation. I had knee replacement,.<\/p>\n
The NYPD said the attacker approached Zu\u00f1iga from behind and pushed her onto the tracks. Police said the attack was unprovoked.<\/p>\n
The incident left some riders at the station calling for additional safety measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should be putting up more barriers, especially when the trains are coming,” rider Elian Moreno said. “Or, at least, having more police officers at least roaming the station, so everybody is kept safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others said the randomness of the attack has made them uneasy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be your mother or your grandmother, it\u2019s not right,\u201d rider Jes\u00fas Herrera said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is going crazy,\u201d another commuter added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s crazy and that\u2019s messed up,\u201d a witness identified as Kamel said.<\/p>\n
Zu\u00f1iga\u2019s cousin, Annie Alvarado, told NBC New York she is grateful to the person she says helped her cousin after the push.<\/p>\n
\u201cA woman that goes to work, trying to make ends meet, so anybody could and try to take her life. This shouldn\u2019t be happening,\u201d Alvarado said.<\/p>\n
Alvarado described the helper staying with Zu\u00f1iga until first responders arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this man threw her to the tracks, and (an) angel came, and grabbed her, and held her, and he didn\u2019t leave her side until the fire department and the police men came,\u201d Alvarado said.<\/p>\n
“I wish that he would come forward so we could thank him and he has our blessing for the way he took care of my cousin,\u201d Alvarado said.<\/p>\n
Zu\u00f1iga also credited that person with helping her survive the ordeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for him, I don\u2019t know what would have happened, Zu\u00f1iga said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC New York. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC New York journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 65-year-old woman is recovering after police say she was pushed onto the subway tracks in The Bronx…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1033255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,38598,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1033254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-subway","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117185363471382531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1033255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}