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A man accused of fatally pushing a 76-year-old down a set of subway stairs in Manhattan made an unexpected appearance in a New York City court shortly after the tragic incident. He departed without authorities realizing he was the suspect, The Post reports.
Rhamell Burke was reportedly behaving erratically when he attended a Friday morning hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court concerning a third-degree assault case, according to sources and court documents.
“He was acting irrationally all morning,” shared a law enforcement insider. “It’s baffling how a system allows someone displaying such behavior to leave without any sort of evaluation, even if they weren’t aware he was a suspect.”
Surveillance footage acquired by The Post captures Burke, 32, at one point raising his hands in a gesture mimicking surrender.
During a 9 a.m. hearing, Burke appeared before Judge Elizabeth Shamahs in relation to the assault charge. The session was adjourned, allowing him to exit the courthouse roughly two hours later.
The evening before, authorities said, Burke had followed retired teacher Ross Falzone near a Chelsea subway station before suddenly shoving the 76-year-old down the subway steps, killing him.
“They didn’t know he was the perp,” a police source said of Burke’s court appearance the next day in the other case.
Two detectives with the NYPD’s Warrants Division who were working transit overtime later saw him walking into Penn Station and grabbed him in relation to Falzone’s death, police sources said.
Burke — who has been arrested four times since February — had been released from Bellevue Hospital’s psych ward five hours before he pushed Falzone at 18th Street in Chelsea.
Cops had brought Burke to the hospital as an “emotionally disturbed person” around 3:30 p.m., according to police. The label is given to mentally unstable people who are picked up by cops for acting erratically.
Officers encountered him acting erratically outside the 17th Precinct stationhouse on East 51st Street. He allegedly pulled a stick from the garbage and held it as he approached them, police said.