The question of the day in New York City on Tuesday — what would you do? — rode on a wave of outrage over a harrowing act the day before. An apparently emotionally disturbed man pushed a 58-year-old stranger onto the track of an oncoming subway train in Times Square.
The man, Ki-Suk Han of Elmhurst, Queens, was struck and killed.
As happens once every few years, riders collectively looked down at the tracks to face a fear peculiar to the subway system. What would you do if you were pushed to the tracks? Or if you were standing beside someone who was pushed?
“I wouldn’t do the wrong thing,” one man said as he waited for a train at the station where Mr. Han was hit, at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue, on Tuesday. That was enough, he said: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The episode, while not unheard of in New York City, brought with it something distinctly new: pictures, taken seconds before the victim was struck, by a freelance photographer waiting for the train.
The pictures were published in The New York Post, bringing wide criticism and derided as ghoulish and insensitive. But the pictures’ mere existence started another conversation across the city on Tuesday, summarized by the television weatherman Al Roker, who, on NBC’s “Today Show”, said, “Somebody’s taking that picture. Why aren’t they helping this guy up?”
The police took a suspect in the case into custody Tuesday afternoon at 50th Street and Seventh Avenue, just a block from the subway entrance where detectives had spent hours boarding subways, car by car, and asking witnesses to come forward.
Vendors who said they knew the man, whose name was not immediately released, said he ran errands and helped them haul their wares to storage for $5 a trip, and that he showed up on Tuesday with his head and beard shaved.
“I showed him The Post,” said Liz Willis, who runs a newsstand on the corner. “ ‘This looks like you.’ He said, ‘That’s not me.’ ” She saw a detective place handcuffs on him a short while later.
The freelance photographer who took the pictures, R. Umar Abbasi, defended his actions in an interview. “I’m being unfairly beaten up in the press,” he said at his apartment in Greenwich Village on Tuesday, leading a reporter to the 49th Street subway platform to re-enact what had happened.
Mr. Abbasi said he was wearing a 20-odd pound backpack of camera gear for an assignment, and was standing near the 47th Street entrance to the platform when he saw the man fall on the tracks. “Nobody helped,” he said. “People started running away.”
“I saw the lights in the distance,” signaling a subway’s approach, he said, so he started firing off flashes on the camera — 49 times in all, he said — as a means of warning the driver.
“I was not aiming to take a photograph of the man on the track,” he said, later adding that his arm was fully outstretched, the camera far from his face.
“If I had reached him in time, I would have pulled him up,” he said. At one point, the man said to have shoved Mr. Han came toward Mr. Abbasi, he said, so he backed up against a wall, still flashing his camera. He estimated the victim was on the tracks for 10 or 15 seconds before he was struck.
“The driver said he slowed down because he saw my flashes,” he said.
Mr. Abbasi said he brought police officers to The Post’s offices, where they examined the pictures for any images of the perpetrator, and he left the camera’s memory card with editors at The Post. He was not part of the decision to publish the pictures.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see the image of death,” he said. “I don’t care about a photograph.”
Mr. Abbasi’s wife, Joan Sherman, said, “I understand people being heroes, but you also have to be realistic about what you’re capable of and your strength.”
Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Wendy Ruderman and Nate Schweber.
The man, Ki-Suk Han of Elmhurst, Queens, was struck and killed.
As happens once every few years, riders collectively looked down at the tracks to face a fear peculiar to the subway system. What would you do if you were pushed to the tracks? Or if you were standing beside someone who was pushed?
“I wouldn’t do the wrong thing,” one man said as he waited for a train at the station where Mr. Han was hit, at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue, on Tuesday. That was enough, he said: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The episode, while not unheard of in New York City, brought with it something distinctly new: pictures, taken seconds before the victim was struck, by a freelance photographer waiting for the train.
The pictures were published in The New York Post, bringing wide criticism and derided as ghoulish and insensitive. But the pictures’ mere existence started another conversation across the city on Tuesday, summarized by the television weatherman Al Roker, who, on NBC’s “Today Show”, said, “Somebody’s taking that picture. Why aren’t they helping this guy up?”
The police took a suspect in the case into custody Tuesday afternoon at 50th Street and Seventh Avenue, just a block from the subway entrance where detectives had spent hours boarding subways, car by car, and asking witnesses to come forward.
Vendors who said they knew the man, whose name was not immediately released, said he ran errands and helped them haul their wares to storage for $5 a trip, and that he showed up on Tuesday with his head and beard shaved.
“I showed him The Post,” said Liz Willis, who runs a newsstand on the corner. “ ‘This looks like you.’ He said, ‘That’s not me.’ ” She saw a detective place handcuffs on him a short while later.
The freelance photographer who took the pictures, R. Umar Abbasi, defended his actions in an interview. “I’m being unfairly beaten up in the press,” he said at his apartment in Greenwich Village on Tuesday, leading a reporter to the 49th Street subway platform to re-enact what had happened.
Mr. Abbasi said he was wearing a 20-odd pound backpack of camera gear for an assignment, and was standing near the 47th Street entrance to the platform when he saw the man fall on the tracks. “Nobody helped,” he said. “People started running away.”
“I saw the lights in the distance,” signaling a subway’s approach, he said, so he started firing off flashes on the camera — 49 times in all, he said — as a means of warning the driver.
“I was not aiming to take a photograph of the man on the track,” he said, later adding that his arm was fully outstretched, the camera far from his face.
“If I had reached him in time, I would have pulled him up,” he said. At one point, the man said to have shoved Mr. Han came toward Mr. Abbasi, he said, so he backed up against a wall, still flashing his camera. He estimated the victim was on the tracks for 10 or 15 seconds before he was struck.
“The driver said he slowed down because he saw my flashes,” he said.
Mr. Abbasi said he brought police officers to The Post’s offices, where they examined the pictures for any images of the perpetrator, and he left the camera’s memory card with editors at The Post. He was not part of the decision to publish the pictures.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see the image of death,” he said. “I don’t care about a photograph.”
Mr. Abbasi’s wife, Joan Sherman, said, “I understand people being heroes, but you also have to be realistic about what you’re capable of and your strength.”
Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Wendy Ruderman and Nate Schweber.