A man was shot several times and critically wounded on a New York City subway train as it arrived at a busy station in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday, panicking evening rush hour passengers, the Associated Press reports. It happened a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard into the subway system to help police search people for weapons after a series of high-profile crimes on trains. Authorities said Thursday’s shooting involved two men who police have not identified and who got into a confrontation aboard the moving train just before 4:45 p.m. One man, 36, pulled out a gun and brandished it. The other man, 32, got possession of the handgun and fired at the person he was arguing with, said Michael Kemper, the Police Department’s chief of transit.
Separately, a pair of vagrant firebugs have become the latest symbols of chaos in the subway system. Surveillance footage captured one man hurling two flaming soup cans at a group of subway riders at a Manhattan subway station on Feb. 5. The unknown arsonist still is on the loose, reports the New York Post.
Earlier this month, a 49-year-old career criminal with a history of emotional disturbances was charged with setting a garbage bag on fire on a subway car at the 125th Street station. Israel Montero of the Bronx, who police say burned his own shoes in the subway blaze, already had dozens of arrests on his rap sheet — including nine last year — and was sought on warrants for blowing off court dates in the Bronx and Manhattan this month. “No amount of cops in the transit system can fix a disordered mind,” one law enforcement source said. "This guy has been in contact with the system over a hundred times through various points of his life and our tools are exhausted,” the source said.