NEW YORK – The heartbroken wife of a New York City man pushed onto subway tracks to his death Monday by a mumbling stranger says she and her husband had argued before the tragedy.
Ki-Suk Han, 58, of Queens died at a hospital shortly after being hit by an oncoming train Monday at the Times Square subway station after an unknown assailant shoved him off of the platform just before a train rumbled into the 49th Street station.
His widow told the New York Post (http://bit.ly/TzCEvR ) she tried to call him after their 11 a.m. fight, but he never picked up.
“We had a fight,” the widow said through tears. “I kept calling him and calling him to see where he was, but he didn’t answer.”
The horrific event stunned New Yorkers who were in the busy Manhattan station at approximately 12:30 p.m. A Post freelance photographer, Umar Abbasi, was on the platform as the ordeal unfolded and tried to warn the operator of the oncoming Q train by flashing his camera.
Police and witnesses said Han was trying to protect fellow straphangers from the deranged man suspect when he was pushed onto the tracks. The killer was described by witnesses as a panhandler who was harassing and cursing at subway riders when Han approached him, witnesses said.
“[Han] went up and tried to calm him down, saying, ‘You’re scaring people,’ ” a law-enforcement source told the Post.
But as the train pulled in, the attacker “just grabbed [Han] and launched him — just threw him — straight onto the tracks,” a witness said.
Han tried to scramble back to the platform as onlookers frantically tried in vain to stop the train.
Dr. Laura Kaplan, a second-year resident at Beth Israel Medical Center who was also on the platform, told the paper she rushed to try and help the dying man.
“People were shouting and yelling when it happened, but then people ran the other way,” said Kaplan, 27. “I heard what I thought were heart sounds,” she said, but Han never took a breath.
Han, who lived with his wife and college-age daughter in Elmhurst, Queens, was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His attacker was last seen running out of the station’s 47th Street exit — at the north end of Times Square — heading northbound on Seventh Avenue. Cops last night were scouring surveillance video for signs of him.
The killer was described by police as black, 30 to 40 years old, about 5-foot-9, with short dreadlocks. He was wearing a white T-shirt, dark jacket, filthy jeans, black sneakers with a white stripe and a black beanie cap.
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Information from: New York Post, http://www.nypost.com
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