PICTURED: NYC subway pushing victim who says she NEVER spoke to her attacker

The father of a woman pushed into an oncoming train in Times Square, confirmed that the attack was entirely random, and said that his daughter may never take the subway again.

Lenny Javier, 42, was on her way to work on Monday morning when she was shoved into the path of the subway train with such force that she lost a shoe.

Javier broke her left arm in three places, smashed her nose and remains in hospital, her father Vidal told Telemundo.

‘She is stable with a lot of pain because she has her face covered,’ he told the channel.

‘Her left arm is fractured in three parts.’

Anthonia Egegbara, 29, of Queens, was charged with attempted murder on Tuesday, after surveillance footage showed her jump up from a bench and shove Javier as the train hurtled into the station. Egegbara has a lengthy history of arrest, including multiple attacks on women on public transport.

Vidal Javier said that the shocking video footage left him feeling ‘helplessness, anger.’

He added: ‘It’s something that, in a way, I perhaps did not know how to express because you feel your hands are tied.’

He said that Lenny told him the police took 15 minutes to arrive and arrest her attacker, adding that she is unlikely to ever resume her commute.

‘She says that she believes she will not get on a train again because she believes that everyone that is next to her will hurt her,’ he said.

‘I think it will be very difficult to return even if life continues, but for her, she would have to go to therapy or take therapy.

‘It is going to be a system which you regain trust in.’

Juan Carlos Javier, Lenny’s cousin, told DailyMail.com that she was operated on on Wednesday, and that they hoped Egegbara was given a significant prison sentence.

‘When something happens to one’s family, one worries, and more so with Lenny who is so loved in the family, too,’ he said.

He described his cousin, who he said was a teaching assistant, as ‘a very dear person.’

Juan Carlos continued: ‘Everyone prayed for everything to go well with the operation and thank God at least everything went well. Waiting for the recovery.

‘Thank God that it was not worse.’

He said Egegbara needed to be held accountable, and prevented from attacking more people.

‘The system is supposed to support the rider,’ he said. ‘You pay tax in this country.

‘I think by law she will get time in jail.

‘And I know that her father is going to have a lawyer for that, I know that he will not let this go unsolved. Knowing him, my uncle, that is not going to stay that way. He is going to put a good lawyer to solve it.

‘If she’s crazy, let her go to a madhouse for so many years, whatever.

‘But I do know that we are going to solve it because it cannot go unpunished.

‘That girl (Lenny) can’t work now. She can’t do anything. You don’t know if the trauma, those injuries, will remain forever because it the train hit her hard.’

He said he felt the New York transit system was ‘very dangerous’.

‘All this that is happening today, you can see that this is caused because of people addicted to drugs; the problem with the coronavirus; the confinement.

‘This confinement has not left people very well. The crime. The economy. There is no help, people are weird, crazy, I don’t know.’

Egegbara has been arrested at least seven times previously, according to NYPD records, with the three most recent incidents involving her allegedly kicking or biting other women on public transport.

‘My face is swollen, I have a broken nose, a fractured chin,’ Javier told WCBS-TV shortly before Egegbara was arrested.

‘I never thought it would happen to me. Someone needs to take responsibility for this, because it can’t be happening.’

Egegbara’s mother, Dedria Gregg, told CBS2 that they were devastated by her actions.

‘We all cried when we saw that video,’ she said. ‘The whole family is distressed and upset about this.

‘I feel so sorry for the woman that got pushed in the subway. I am so sorry.’

Egegbara’s family said she has long suffered from mental illness and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, among other disorders.

They said she was kind and ‘sweet’ when she took her medication, but as an adult she cannot be compelled to take it, and has been hospitalized more than 50 times since she was a teenager.

‘She has been mental for a while, and the whole family has been struggling and fighting to get her help,’ Gregg said.

‘It’s so hard to have someone in your family that suffers from mental illness.

‘Everybody’s going through it right now. The whole family is distraught.’

Nancy Egegbara said that her sister needed psychiatric help.

‘My sister has been failed by the system that’s supposed to help her,’ she told CBS2.

‘She really needs an institution, a place that can keep her safe and away from violence or violent behaviors.

‘I’m not condoning. What she did was wrong, but what she did stems from her mental illness.’

Egegbara was arrested as a crime wave terrorizes New Yorkers, with transit crimes rising by 121.7 per cent for the week ending September 26, compared to the same period in 2020.

A total of 51 transit crimes were recorded for the period between September 20 and 26, compared to just 23 for the same period last year.

Transit crimes rose 59 percent in the month of September, with 184 recorded so far this year, compared to 116 recorded last year. That’s despite weekday subway ridership levels that remain just half of what they were before the pandemic struck.

The statistics are sure to make grim reading for New York City officials, who are pushing for workers to return to the office, and for tourists to return to the Big Apple, in a bid to boost its COVID-ravaged finances.

Egegbara, whose listed address is a hotel in Far Rockaway Queens that is used as a female shelter, appeared for arraignment on Wednesday.

ABC 7 News reported that police might be sending Egegbara to a hospital to be mentally evaluated, with no motive yet given for the seemingly random assault.

Court records show that she has multiple pending cases in the New York court system, including a September 19 arrest for turnstile jumping in the Bronx.

On July 5, she was charged with harassment and assault in Manhattan.

And a case from June 20, 2018 shows charges of disorderly conduct/fighting still pending in Brooklyn.

The subway pushing came just hours before a man shot himself in the leg in the same subway station.  

Monday’s attack has yet to be included in the latest crime statistics, but the headline-making violence threatens to derail New York City officials’ bid to lure workers and tourists back to the COVID-ravaged city.

The incident occurred at the Times Square station, where thousands of tourist commute daily to visit the world-famous commercial intersection in Midtown, Manhattan.

Times Square sees an estimated 50 million visitors annually and about 330,000 people pass through it daily.

‘This unprovoked attack was senseless and absurd,’ MTA acting Chief Communications Officer Tim Minton said.

‘The city needs to provide additional mental health services to assist those who may endanger themselves and others. The NYPD’s rapid identification and arrest in this case makes riders safer.’

One subway rider, who witnessed the shoving, said the crime at the station is not surprising.

‘This is like what it used to be like in the 80s,’ the individual told ABC 7.

‘People are wicked to be able to push someone on a moving train, and for what? I don’t know, but it’s horrible,’ another passenger, CJ Stewart told CBS 2.

According to witnesses, Egegbara timed her attack just as a train was approaching the station.

 

 

Witnesses said the attack serves as a reminder to be aware of your surroundings.

‘Definitely a good reminder to keep your eyes peeled and be on your toes in New York,’ West Village resident Tyler Sparling said.

‘We’re all usually in our phones and stuff, or listening to music. So we’re not always 100% aware,’ echoed Bryana Yard, of Brooklyn.

Police taped off the portion of the platform where the incident occurred and continuing to search for the suspect.

The busy Times Square station was a hotspot for crime on Monday, just hours later officers were called to the station again for reports of shots fired.

A 39-year-old from Brooklyn was urinating in the corner of West 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, near a McDonald’s and sushi restaurant Wasabi, when he was shot in his right leg, according to the New York Post.

He is believed to have accidentally shot himself in the leg.

Eyewitnesses told ABC 7 that the shots went off inside the subway station, with the man seen stumbling up to ground level afterwards, before re-entering the station to ask for help.

The bullet sent him stumbling down into a nearby train station.

Video from the scene shows officers carrying an injured person into an ambulance as passersby cross the bustling intersection.

Authorities have not named the man, who is likely to face criminal charges as a result. He is reportedly not cooperating with investigators.

Monday’s incidents come as overall crime in New York City dropped in August after a summer crime wave that had city officials pointing fingers at each other.

Total crime dropped by one percent in August compared to August 2020, with the biggest drops being in burglary, -24 percent, and shooting incidents, -30.7 percent, according to the latest official monthly figures from the NYPD.

The trend may be reversing, as weekly numbers ending on Sunday show that felony assaults are up by 7 percent, shootings are up by 1.6 percent and rapes are up by 2.2 percent as a whole compared to the same time last year.

Monday’s shooting is the third such incident in Times Square this year.

In May, three unrelated bystanders were hit by stray bullets in the busy tourist hub after police say a man started shooting indiscriminately during an argument with someone else.

A four-year-old girl was struck in the leg, a 24-year-old woman was hit in the thigh and a 44-year-old woman was shot in the foot, police said. All were expected to survive.

‘This little girl was so strong,’ Officer Alyssa Vogel told WNBC. ‘She didn’t even cry once except when we were putting the tourniquet on. She screamed because it’s very painful.’

In July, 16-year-old Avon Darden turned himself in and was charged with attempted murder after shooting US Marine Samuel Poulin, 21, in the back.

Poulin was not seriously injured.

The young soldier had recently graduated from The Citadel military college in South Carolina with a commission in the US Marine Corps.

The New York City Police Department has also reported numerous attacks in subway stations in the last few weeks.

On September 13, a 32-year-old was attacked after she confronted a man for shoving past her on the escalator at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station.

According to the Daily News, the woman told her attacker to ‘say excuse me.’

He responded ‘I did’ and kicked her in the chest.

The victim fell backwards to the bottom of the escalator as the suspect continued up the escalator and out of the station.

Police say the woman suffered cuts and bruises to her back, arms, legs, right knee and right thigh and trauma to her left ankle.

Earlier last month, a deaf woman fell onto the subway tracks after she was hit in the head by a homeless man who had been arrested for sucker-punching another victim just four days earlier.

Xing Zhou, 59, was on her way to church on September 5 when a man hit her in the head at Manhattan’s Union Square subway station. She lost her balance during the attack and fell onto the tracks.

Two bystanders helped Zhou off the tracks and waited with her until help arrived. She was taken to the hospital and given medication for her pain.

Police later arrested Vladimir Pierre, 41, in connection to the attack.

In August, a similar incident occurred at the Union Square station, where a homeless man was caught striking a victim in the back of the head with a hammer, before leaving him bleeding on the platform after the victim looked at him in the ‘wrong way.’  

Police arrested 41-year-old Jamar Newton from Brooklyn and charged him with assault, reckless endangerment, criminal possession of a weapon and robbery.  

That incident occurred one day after another woman was randomly attacked on a subway platform and beaten with a metal pole while waiting for the G train.