For many in New York City, it’s a scenario straight out of their deepest fears.
A nurse from the Bronx shared his chilling ordeal, recounting how an unpredictable assailant suddenly shoved him in a subway station, leaving him unconscious and bleeding as bystanders stood by. The incident occurred without warning, and shockingly, no one stepped forward to offer assistance.
Josue Romano, 47, recounted his terrifying brush with the unknown, which took place while he was waiting for a southbound D-train at Fordham Road station on June 27. Out of nowhere, an unstable individual launched a vicious attack, propelling him face-first into the side of an oncoming train. The force left him with a concussion, Romano revealed in an interview with The Post.
“Did anybody help me out? Nobody helped me out,” Romano clarified on Thursday. His voice carried a sense of disbelief and disappointment. “Not even the conductor. There were people inside the train, and nobody came out to ask what happened to me. Nothing. Nothing.”
The perpetrator remains at large. This week, the NYPD released surveillance footage that, although grainy, offers a glimpse of the suspect. The individual is seen pacing around the subway car, clad in a white undershirt and dark-colored pants, igniting a public appeal for information to bring the attacker to justice.
Romano said he was waiting for his train to head downtown around 2:20 p.m. when he noticed the assailant out of the corner of his eye and became alert.
“This man is acting kind of strange,” Romano said. “I believe he was on drugs or something, and then I see he goes into his duffel bag. I don’t know what he was looking for in the duffel bag. I said, ‘Ok, let me keep my distance because he’s kind of acting kind of funny.’
“But the man that was right behind me, so I said, ‘Ok, let me just walk away, because of things that are going on in New York, there’s a lot of crazy things going on in New York.’”
Despite the precaution, and Romano moving away from the edge, the nut rushed at him.
“I glanced to the right and I see something white coming towards me,” he recalled. “It was real fast because when I glanced, it was already coming to me so I didn’t have time to react, to like kind of get out the way, and that’s when it happened. I got hit.
“He pushed me in the back right in train that was coming in.”
Romano suffered injuries to his face and mouth, and collapsed onto the subway platform bloodied and unconscious, and was treated at St. Barnabas Hospital when help did arrive.
He said the incident has left him afraid to ride the rails — and skeptical of NYPD claims that the city transit system is safer than it’s been in months.
Major crime in the city’s subway system was down by about 1% in June, compared to last year, although felony assaults were up by 20 incidents in the month, according to NYPD stats.
“The statistics don’t mean anything,” Romano said. “I think what we see is what goes on and today is not the same as yesterday. The crime has grown more now than before.
“It’s just the crime is still growing and growing and growing no matter what the statistics say.”
The NYPD is asking anyone with information on the late June attack to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or, for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit tips by logging at on X @NYPDTips.