Investigators are desperately trying to find the woman, who witnesses say pushed a man, identified as 46-year-old Sunando Sen of Corona in front of a No. 7 train at the 40th Street station in Sunnyside, Queens, Thursday night.
Investigators even put a laptop on the trunk of a car to attract straphangers, hoping someone might recognize the woman the NYPD is searching for. Police are also aggressively searching psych wards and homeless shelters
Authorities say there were no words exchanged before the mumbling woman pushed Sen onto the elevated tracks as the train approached just after 8 p.m.
Witnesses say they had no time to react, and passengers on the train had no idea what happened.
"They said that's the last stop on the 7 train, debris fell on the tracks," rider James Callanan said. "That's all they were telling people...People were asking them what happened, and the conductor was like, 'I don't know what happened.'"
Witnesses say that just before the incident, the woman was talking to herself and pacing. Police describe her as a heavyset Hispanic woman in her 20s, standing about 5-foot-5 and wearing a white, blue and gray ski jacket.
Bityut Sarker hired Sen to work in his Greenwich Village copy and print store in the mid 90s. Now, he is planning Sen's funeral.
"He's a part of our family," said Sarker.
The 46-year-old was not married, and did not have children, but he made a lot of friends in his time in the United States.
On Friday night, Sen's friends and family are mourning his loss, and like so many others, are wondering why, according to police, he was pushed.
This is a question perhaps only the suspect will be able to answer if police can track her down.
Anyone with information in regards to the homicide or the identity of the suspect is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS.
This was the second deadly incident involving a subway platform push in the last month.
On December 3, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han was shoved in front of a train in Times Square. A homeless man, 30-year-old Naeem Davis, was charged with murder in Han's death and was ordered held without bail. He has pleaded not guilty and has said that Han was the aggressor and had attacked him first. The two men hadn't met before.
Service was suspended Thursday night on the 7 train line, which connects Manhattan and Queens, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was using buses to shuttle riders while police investigated.
Being pushed onto the train tracks is a silent fear for many of the commuters who ride the city's subway a total of more than 5.2 million times on an average weekday, but deaths are rare. Among the more high-profile cases was the January 1999 death of aspiring screenwriter Kendra Webdale, who was shoved by a former mental patient. After that, the state Legislature passed Kendra's Law, which lets mental health authorities supervise patients who live outside institutions to make sure they are taking their medications and aren't threats to safety.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
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