MTA worker describes how man repeatedly smashed subway booth
A transit worker at the City College station said she thought she might not see her children again as a man slammed a cinderblock into her booth's glass — and police later found he was also carrying a knife.
An MTA worker described the terror of watching a man repeatedly smash a cinderblock into the glass of her subway booth at the City College station on April 5, 2021, in an account reported by NBC New York.
The worker recorded video of the attack, capturing her own frightened breathing and cries for help; she told NBC New York the impact was so loud she initially thought someone had fired a gun at the glass. "I have a 12-year-old and an 8-year-old and I was thinking the last time I was going to see them was that morning," she said, according to the outlet's reporting.
Police arrived and arrested the suspect. Officers found he was carrying more than the cinderblock: they recovered an enlarged knife from him as well, NBC New York reported.
The worker's account of what could have happened
"To see they took an enlarged knife off him, it plays in my mind if he had got into the booth got through the glass, what was he going to do to me next," the worker said, per NBC New York's report.
The aftermath and a wider pattern
Both the attacked worker and a colleague who witnessed the incident remained on leave afterward, saying they were too traumatized to return, according to the report. NBC New York's coverage cites the transit workers' union, TWU Local 100, placing the incident within a larger pattern: the union counted nearly 200 incidents of harassment or assault against subway workers since early 2021.
The retrieved reporting does not specify what safety measures, if any, the MTA committed to for booth workers in the immediate aftermath of this attack, nor whether the union's tally of nearly 200 incidents was broken down by type of assault or by subway line and station. Both details would matter to understanding whether City College's incident reflected a systemwide risk or one concentrated in particular locations, but neither was established in the source fetched this session.
What it signals
The union's count of nearly 200 incidents in a matter of months frames this attack as one data point in a broader spike in violence against transit workers, rather than an isolated event — a pattern serious enough that two employees, not just the one directly attacked, were unable to return to work in its immediate aftermath.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by NBC New York. It restores a story originally published on this site in April 2021; figures are as reported at the time.