Everything always seems to start the same way.
I will beat you!
In a jungle confrontation between strangers on the subway, hostility suddenly escalates before anyone else can figure out who is yelling at whom or why.
Come on man! Do something!
The moment is so familiar that other passengers barely bother to look up from their phones or pause their conversations.
I will defeat you──only you. only you.
But a fight that broke out on a speeding A train in Brooklyn on Thursday didn’t end there. In front of a rush-hour crowd, things continued to escalate, from words to fists to blades and finally guns.
The encounter came just over a week after New York’s governor took the extraordinary step of ordering the National Guard underground to make trains feel safer. The shooting undermines the city’s message that riding the subway is statistically quite safe.
The incident heightened a sense of futility in a system that seems to capture all the troubles from the city above — mental health crises, illegal guns — and squeeze them into crowded steel tubes.
For those riding the A train Thursday, some with small children in tow, any city statistics were unlikely to be comforting. Send in the police, send in the guards — many people have come to believe that no matter what, the subway will be the subway.
Films of fights or shootings are everywhere, appearing and disappearing. The song stands out with its familiar rhythm.
Thursday’s shooting was more than just a day of madness on the A train.
It looks more like a clear representation of the urban condition above, a sense of metropolitan anxiety felt, described, and debated from Flatbush to Fordham and back again. A small broken fragment of a place that leads underground for everyone to see.
0:01
The film begins after this encounter. Something alarmed a passenger, a man wearing dark clothing and a baseball cap. He relentlessly taunted a silent man sitting there. Sometimes he would lean into the men and yell.
Trains run non-stop along fast tracks with long intervals between stations. No one seems to care about the level of hostility that would never escalate on other forms of transportation – such as on airplanes, an environment that is equally cramped and prone to passenger frustration. On the subway, a threatening shout might simply be called: Thursday.
The woman recording the video expressed this in her own way, pausing to focus the camera on her own blank face, unmoved: Here we go again.
Finally, seemingly fed up with the abuse, the seated man stood up and crouched down into a fighting stance. The yelling man seemed delighted with the challenge and struck a pose. Only then did the dozen or more nearby passengers collectively decide it was time to back up and push towards the other end of the car.
“Little things that don’t matter”
Aroldo Gonzalez, 20, knows that moment all too well. The panic was louder than the questions – why? How is this going? — and the need to leave.
In April 2022, Mr. Gonzalez was riding the N train in Brooklyn when a man stood up from his seat and opened fire. The man, Frank James, shot and wounded Mr Gonzalez and nine others and was convicted and sentenced to 10 life sentences.
Mr Gonzalez is now more aware on train rides and becomes angry if any altercation occurs.
“I do give them more consideration now,” he said Saturday of the altercations. “I don’t know what one person is capable of. It doesn’t even have to be an argument. It has to be someone whose voice is louder than it should be.”
Like many, he remains confused as to why a collision or misunderstanding seems to have to escalate into a shouting match.
“Just little things that don’t matter,” he said. “Simple things can be resolved with ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I’m sorry.'”
1:24
On the A train on Thursday, the two men – who went well beyond “I’m sorry” – circled each other around a pole and exchanged a few sloppy punches before falling to the ground. On an empty bench. But then a young woman, perhaps a companion of the taunted man, burst out of the crowd and appeared to slash the yelling man’s back with a razor blade.
“You stabbed me?” he asked her in genuine surprise. He reached behind his back and fumbled at the increasingly red spots on his shirt.
A bystander wearing a safety vest walked in. He calmly separated the men and they seemed to comply. The battle may be over here.
Then the bleeding man stood up, took off his jacket, and threw it onto another bench. When it landed, it was not gentle, but made a heavy impact sound.
No one heard. During the brief fight, many passengers kept shouting – “There’s a baby!” – and no one cared what might be inside the jacket.
The bleeding man seemed to decide his next move. “I locked you up!” he shouted. He then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun.
Moments later, four gunshots echoed through the train and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station.
Data, fear and giving up
Officials relied on data that showed it was statistically unlikely to become a victim of subway crime. The number of attacks on a given day is small compared to the number of passengers and rides. This resonates with many people: A recent Metropolitan Transportation Authority survey found that just over half of riders think subways are safe.
However, another clip from Thursday has surfaced. This was taken from a nearby carriage on the same A train.
Dozens of riders – too many to count on the screen – fell to the floor. Some people cried. Others looked around, then lowered their heads. Someone shouted for help. There was no immediate response.
It’s an image that embodies the present moment better than any number.
“I didn’t want to go to New York,” Sherri Paul, the woman who shot the video, told local Fox affiliate Fox5NY the next day. “If I have to take a train, take a bus, I don’t think I’m in New York. I don’t think it’s safe for me.”
The fears she described were familiar to Mr Gonzalez, who recently admitted that it had been a year and 11 months since he was shot by Mr James on a train, with a bullet piercing his calf, It fell below the knees. He couldn’t face the subway for a while.
But now, that fear has turned into submission.
“They said they were going to put more people on patrol,” he said, thinking back to 2022. “I think it’s the same, if not worse.” I see people doing things, homeless people performing. A bunch of stuff that should have been fixed, but simply wasn’t. “
4:11
The doors of the A train finally opened at Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, sending passengers along the busy route in and out of Brooklyn. Police surrounded the station and closed it down to investigate what happened.
The bleeding man is last seen in the video walking towards another man with a gun. But seconds later, another man apparently snatched his gun away and he was shot in the head, police said. He was taken to hospital in critical but stable condition.
As the facts slowly emerged, crowded trains were stalled in both directions, with passengers wondering what was causing the delay.
Stopped at High Street station for the afternoon commute on another nearby A train and stayed there. 5 minutes turned into 10 minutes, then 20 minutes. There is no explanation other than “police activity.” Frustration set in.
Everything always seems to start the same way.
“You sit there, I’m old enough to be your mum!” one woman can be heard shouting. The woman shouted louder.
Some people laughed. Most people just sit there. The yelling continued until the person being yelled at stood up and left the car.
It’s another Thursday.
