A man has been arrested in New York after one woman was pushed onto the subway tracks and another was repeatedly punched in the face, police said.
Curtis Signal, 25, was arrested following the violent attack in Brooklyn Saturday and at a nearby men’s shelter.
The incident occurred around 8.45 a.m. on the R subway line at 53rd Street and Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, sources toldThe New York Post.
A man first pushed the 51-year-old onto the tracks without warning, causing her to suffer three broken ribs, then turned on another woman, 43, who was standing on the platform. She was taken to hospital with facial injuries.
“The guy was sitting on the platform and they were standing,” bystander Al Rivera told The Post. “All of a sudden he pushed her on the tracks and then he turned around and pounced on the other lady. He was hitting her, punching her in the face.”
Two other people immediately rushed to help the woman who had been pushed onto the tracks and dragged her back onto the platform, eyewitnesses said.
“I can only imagine how petrified they were,” Rivera said.
Signal was charged with reckless endangerment, assault, and harassment, police said. The Independent has contacted the NYPD for more information on the incident.
The Post reports that Signal is a repeat offender and is on probation until June 2027. Saturday’s incident was not the first assault at a subway station he is alleged to have been involved in.
In early September 2023, he allegedly punched a 67-year-old woman multiple times in the face while waiting for an F train at 169th Street in Jamaica, Queens. Signal allegedly fled and was only connected to the assault months later when he was arrested for fare evasion.
Less than a week later he also assaulted a cop at the Grand Concourse/Tremont Avenue station in the Bronx, leaving the officer with a broken nose, sources told The Post.
In that incident he was charged with assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration.
Signal was also charged with assault in May 2022 and acting in a manner injurious to a child, after allegedly hitting his 13-year-old sister and giving her a black eye.
