Veteran transit worker Anthony Nelson took a beating on the job close to four years ago. And it’s taken nearly that long to see his alleged attacker inch toward a possible trial.
The station cleaner visited a Bronx courtroom again on Wednesday to see the man prosecutors say pummeled him. He expressed frustration with the pace of the case and said he feels “sorry” for the man accused of assault.
Nelson suffered a broken collarbone and nose in the August 2022 attack after trying to stop a serial transit troublemaker from hassling riders outside the No. 6 line’s Pelham Bay Park stop in The Bronx.
“I was trying to do something right,” Nelson said. “My life was altered for doing the right thing.”
The man accused of the attack, Alexander Wright, has previously been deemed unfit to stand trial. But that could change.
On Wednesday, Bronx Supreme Court Justice Alvin Yearwood ordered Wright — who has at least 13 prior arrests, including “some” in the subway, according to the MTA — to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he is fit to stand trial.
MTA officials have previously pushed for Wright to be banned for up to three years from the authority’s subways, buses, commuter railroads and other facilities. In 2022, Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief executive, sent a letter to Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark asking that a judge issue the first-of-its-kind ban upon conviction.
Transit worker Anthony Nelson speaks to reporters before a court appearance for the man charged with battering him nearly four years ago outside of a Bronx station, Jan. 21, 2026. Credit: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
“He’s been done wrong, as well,” Nelson said outside the Bronx courtroom where Wright made his latest appearance. “When is the state going to say, oh, we got to help people and not put Band-Aids on situations.”
The 38-year-old victim, who has worked for the transit authority for a decade, was among 711 transit workers who were victims of harassment or assault in 2022, according to MTA data. While overall subway crime fell last year to its lowest level in more than a decade and a half, a top official with Transport Workers Union Local 100 said workers remain leery of being attacked while on duty.
“At the end of the day, there’s a lot of assaults that take place that’s not reported,” said Robert Kelley, a vice president with TWU Local 100. “We have people that perform lewd acts, people that spit on our members and things of that nature.”
The latest step in the long-running case against Wright came as Nelson arrived in court hopeful of getting “answers in concrete” long after an attack whose physical and mental fallout continues to keep him out of work.
“We’re just running the same race, it’s been going on three years now,” Nelson said. “The same answers for the same thing: How many times do you gotta go through this?”
Yearwood ordered Wright, whose court-appointed attorney described him as “unstable,” to remain behind bars after the man had previously been sprung from jail on $500 bail in September 2024. He then repeatedly skipped court dates before being arrested again in December of that year.
Defense lawyer Claudia Montoya, of The Legal Aid Society, told the judge that Wright suffers from “serious mental illness” and that a psychiatrist is evaluating his lengthy mental-health history.
“I think Mr. Nelson said it best: We want people to get the help they need, I mean, that is the goal that we all have,” Kelley said. “But we certainly want justice to be served to the fullest extent of the law.”
Gaby Celiba, vice president of security at New York City Transit, stood alongside Nelson and TWU members to say that officials are “frustrated, obviously” with the drawn-out case.
“What Mr. Nelson is looking for and the family is looking for, is for justice to be done, so that he can continue to move forward,” Celiba said.
Nelson said that has been made challenging by the case stretching into its fourth year and having to relive the attack each time he goes to court.
But he said he would not hesitate to step in once more if he were to encounter trouble in the subway system.
“I pray that if something was to happen, that there would be somebody that’s not going to pull out their phone and try to get a recording, but actually step in and rectify the issue or try to help,” Nelson said. “So yes, I absolutely would do it again.”
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