NEW YORK — A woman who told police
she shoved a man to his death off a subway platform into the path of a train
because she hates Muslims and thought he was one was charged Saturday with
murder as a hate crime, prosecutors said.
Erika Menendez was charged in the death of Sunando Sen, who was crushed
by a 7 train in Queens on Thursday night, the second time this month a commuter
has died in such a nightmarish fashion.
Menendez,
31, was awaiting arraignment on the charge Saturday evening, Queens District
Attorney Richard A. Brown said. She could face 25 years to life in prison if
convicted. She was in custody and couldn’t be reached for comment, and it was
unclear if she had an attorney.
Menendez,
who was arrested after a tip by a passer-by who saw her on a street and thought
she looked like the woman in a surveillance video released by police, admitted
shoving Sen, who was pushed from behind, authorities said.
“I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I
hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve
been beating them up,” Menendez told police, according to the district
attorney’s office.
Sen
was from India, but it’s unclear if he was Muslim or Hindu. The 46-year-old
lived in Queens and ran a printing shop. He was shoved from an elevated
platform on the 7 train line, which connects Manhattan and Queens. Witnesses
said a muttering woman rose from her seat on a platform bench and pushed him on
the tracks as a train entered the station and then ran off.
The
two had never met before, authorities said, and witnesses told police they
hadn’t interacted on the platform.
Police
released a sketch and security camera video showing a woman running from the
station where Sen was killed.
Menendez
was arrested by police earlier in the day after a passer-by on a Brooklyn
street spotted her and called 911. Police responded, confirmed her identity and
took her into custody, where she made statements implicating herself in the
crime, police spokesman Paul Browne said.
The
district attorney said such hateful remarks could not be tolerated.
“The defendant is accused of committing what is
every subway commuter’s worst nightmare,” said Brown, the district attorney.
On
Dec. 3, another man was pushed to his death in a Times Square subway station. A
photo of the man clinging to the edge of the platform a split-second before he
was struck by a train was published on the cover of the New York Post, causing
an uproar about whether the photographer, who was catching a train, or anyone
else should have tried to help him.
It’s
unclear whether anyone tried — or could have tried — to help Sen on Thursday.
Mayor
Michael Bloomberg on Friday urged residents to keep Sen’s death in perspective
as he touted new historic lows in the city’s annual homicide and shooting
totals.
“It’s a very tragic case, but what we want to focus
on today is the overall safety in New York,” Bloomberg told reporters following
a police academy graduation.
But
commuters still expressed concern over subway safety.
“It’s just a really sad commentary on the world and
on human beings, period,” said Howard Roth, who takes the subway daily.
He
said the deadly push reminded him, “the best thing is what they tell you —
don’t stand near the edge, and keep your eyes open.”
Such
subway deaths are rare, but other high-profile cases include the 1999 fatal
shoving of Kendra Webdale, an aspiring screenwriter, by a former psychiatric
patient. That case led to a state law allowing for more supervision of mentally
ill people living outside institutions.
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And
deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by [the means of] those miracles which
he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on
the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound
by a sword, and did live.
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And
he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the
beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the
image of the beast should be killed.
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And
he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to
receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
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There be
spirits that are created for vengeance, which in their fury lay on sore
strokes; in the time of destruction they pour out their force, and appease the
wrath of him that made them.
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