By Rebecca Henely
A 58-year-old Elmhurst man died early Monday afternoon shortly after being pushed in front of a downtown-bound Q subway train in Manhattan, police said.
Authorities got the 911 call that Ki-Suk Han, of 52nd and Justice avenues, had been hit at around 12:30 p.m., police said. The Q train had struck Han when entering a Times Square platform near West 49th Street and 7th Avenue, police said.
Han was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, police said.
A spokesman for the NYPD said police were questioning a man in connection with the platform pushing Tuesday evening, and the New York Post identified the suspect as 30-year-old Nieem Davis. The NYPD had described the suspect as a black male with dreadlocks. When last seen, he was wearing a dark jacket, a gray T-shirt and a cap, police said. A lineup was expected to be held Wednesday morning.
Sources who spoke to the New York Post gave conflicting descriptions of what led up to Han’s being pushed, the newspaper reported. Some police sources said the pusher was an emotionally disturbed panhandler who Han had tried to calm down, the Post reported.
But one witness said Han had started the fight, the Post reported.
Han’s wife said he had been drinking before the incident, the Post reported. He left their home on 52nd Avenue in Elmhurst around 11 a.m. before going into Manhattan, the Post reported.
“We had a fight,” she told the Post while crying. “I kept calling him and calling him to see where he was, but he didn’t answer.”
Witnesses, including a Post freelance photographer who snapped a shot of Han struggling to get back up on the platform seconds before he was hit, said Han had been thrown onto the tracks. Freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi had repeatedly fired his camera flash to try to warn the train driver that Han was on the tracks, while other straphangers screamed and waved their hands in an attempt to get the driver to stop.
“Out of the periphery of my eye, I just saw a body flying, flying through the air,” Abbasi told the Post. “People started waving their hands, anything they could find. They were shouting to the man in the tracks, ‘Get out! Get out of there!’”
The train operator was treated for shock after the accident, the newspaper said.
The NYPD asked anyone with more information about the homicide to contact Crime Stoppers, which can be reached by calling 1-800-577-TIPS, by visiting nypdcrimestoppers.com or by texting 274637(CRIMES).
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
