Hip-hop star turned MTA conductor ‘shocked’ after New York subway shooting

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go through Joshua Rhett Miller

A deranged passenger on a crowded Brooklyn train was shot in the head with his own gun during a rush-hour attack and the conductor said he no longer felt safe at work.

The harrowing images and sounds of a chaotic clash between two subway passengers as Fred Reeves, 58, drove the A express train into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn street station were unavoidable .

“I’m shocked,” Reeves, of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, told The Washington Post on Saturday. “Like, my nerves are at their limit.”

Reeves, the rapper “Doc Ice” of legendary Brooklyn hip-hop groups UTFO and Whodini, said he saw the distressed passengers as the train approached the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street Station on Thursday and took immediate action.

Panicked passengers began rushing toward Reeves’ car, banging on the door frantically, and a confrontation between Younes Obuade and a deranged Dajuan Robinson escalated into gunfire.

The two men got into a fight after gunman Robinson, 36, falsely accused Obuade, 32, of being an immigrant and instigated a fight with him.

The video shows a woman believed to be Obouad’s girlfriend then stabbing Robinson in the back.

Robinson then drew his weapon and Obuade took the gun away and shot him four times, leaving him with life-threatening injuries.

He recalled Levi’s partially opening the hatch as the frightened rider rushed toward him and signaled for emergency braking.

“You know, I thought it was a fight because we were fighting on the train,” Levis said. “They wanted to pull it, but I said, ‘Don’t pull it, if you pull that valve, we’re going to be trapped in the space station.'”

Reeves, who started working as a subway conductor in 2018, recalled telling passengers to stay calm and not to pull the emergency brake because police would be at the station.

“So, I closed the door and said to my supervisor, ‘This is 16-18, Apples, Lefferts, 2-7, coming into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn, we need police and emergency services,'” Reeves said. “I think it was a fight because people were flooding my position because it was in my car but not in my taxi.”

Seconds later, Levis heard multiple gunshots.

The train has just arrived.

“All you heard was, ‘Bow, bow, bow,'” he recalled. “Oh my God, I ducked to the other side. Then I opened the door and people came pouring out, screaming and crying. And then I looked and there was this guy lying on the floor.”

Police rushed to the scene with guns drawn.

During the riot, a frantic passenger tried to get Reeves to let a young girl into his cab, but he refused to do so, citing MTA policy.

“You could see the fear on their faces,” he said. “I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ So when I closed the door and I heard gunshots and saw people running and screaming, the first thing I thought of was this little girl.

“I thought, ‘Wow, what if it was my kid on the train?'” Levis said. “It’s just a feeling [I was in] A helpless place where you can’t do anything for anyone. But I let the train come into the station, opened the doors, and let the police do what they could to keep these people safe. “

Reeves, a married father of six, said he no longer felt safe at work.

“Bullets don’t have names,” he said. “It’s not a bulletproof taxi, so I have to hunker down and hope the guy doesn’t shoot anywhere. You don’t know what the situation is – they could just shoot anyone.”

He tried to stay as low as possible while guiding the train into the station.

“This is not a safe place, especially for a command. We are in the center of everything,” he said.

Reeves calls for more police in subways.

“Maybe if they patrolled the entire train operation, it might give us as conductors and passengers a little more safety,” Reeves said. He said he was “confident that they would correct” the hazards.

“When they are seen, especially in large numbers, people think before they act, even though they may have weapons,” he said.

He doesn’t know when he will be able to return to work.

“I’m not sure because this situation always comes to my mind,” he recalled of the girl who tried to get into his taxi in a traumatic moment. “I just have this searing image of her in my mind.”