8 Subway Attacks Over Weekend Show Challenge Adams Faces on Crime

The mayor and governor released a safety plan for the subways that focused on homelessness. But few homeless people were involved in the attacks that spanned Friday evening to Monday morning.

The weekend after Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a plan to address safety concerns on New York City’s subways that focused on stopping homeless people from sheltering in the system, at least eight violent attacks took place in stations and on trains, only one of which involved a suspect who appeared to be homeless.

There was little pattern to the attacks, which the police said began Friday evening, when a 31-year-old man was stabbed in the left forearm in Morningside Heights in Manhattan on a southbound 1 train by a man he had asked to stop smoking, and ended early Monday morning, when a 30-year-old woman was struck in the face with a small metal pipe on a southbound 4 train in the Bronx.

Altogether, the attacks took place in every borough in which the subway operates, on four different train lines and in four different stations. None of the attacks were fatal, though some of the victims were hospitalized, and few arrests were made.