A retired kindergarten teacher killed by an unhinged brute who shoved him down a flight of subway stairs was the third straphanger he attacked in the city’s transit system in slightly more than a month, according to an earlier victim.
The 23-year-old woman said she was on a train heading home from a night out with her friend around 4 a.m. on April 2, when Rhamell Burke, 32, approached them and said something unintelligible as the pair tried to move to the next train car.
“We were like, ‘Uh no…’ Then he got mad and came up,” the woman recalled. “He walked up to my friend and literally donkey-kicked him like crazy in the back and pushed him through into the other car.”
“My friend runs and then he grabs my head and pushes my head down. He palmed the back of my head. It felt like he was trying to push me to the ground,” she continued.
The victim managed to hold herself up, then broke away from his grasp just as the train stopped at the W. Fourth St.-Washington Square station and bolted onto the platform with her friend.
“Then I turned around and saw he started following us off the train. That’s when I knew it was really bad,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is going on?’”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
The victim managed to hold herself up, then broke away from his grasp just as the train stopped at the W. Fourth St.-Washington Square station and bolted onto the platform with her friend. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
The woman said they “luckily” ran into cops on the platform, who swiftly arrested Burke, but that they ultimately decided not to press charges.
“We didn’t have to go to the hospital,” she said. “I guess we kind of just brushed it off which we shouldn’t have done. I really regret not just pressing charges.”
“People [on the platform] were also getting mad at us,” the woman added. “They didn’t know what happened, so people were yelling at us. We’re two African American individuals and people are yelling at us, like, ‘Why are you putting another Black man in jail?,’ making us feel guilty.”
Just more than a month later, Burke, who had just been released from Bellevue’s psychiatric E.R. hours earlier, shoved Ross Falzone, 76, down a flight of stairs at the 18th St. subway station in Chelsea around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
Falzone landed at the bottom of the stairs, suffering a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib.
Burke fled on foot. Medics rushed Falzone to Bellevue Hospital, but he died at 2:55 a.m. Friday, police said.
Courtesy of Chris Ford
Ross Falzone (pictured), 76, died after being shoved down the steps of a Chelsea subway station by a man released earlier in the day after undergoing a hospital psychiatric evaluation, police said. (Courtesy of Chris Ford)
Upon learning what Burke had done on Thursday, the earlier victim said her “heart was broken.”
“I was in complete shock. I started crying the moment I found out,” she said. “I did feel a sense of guilt.”
Burke, who cops said is homeless, was also arrested three times in February for assault, burglary, resisting arrest, drugs and weapons charges.
On Feb. 2, Burke was arrested for assaulting a Port Authority cop who tried to cuff him for stealing chips at a Duane Reade inside the Westfield World Trade Center in the Financial District, according to sources.
He was charged with burglary on Feb. 14 for kicking in the door to a supply closet and stealing a shovel inside the 23rd St. subway station on the No. 1 Line in Chelsea, when he also hurled a garbage can onto the tracks, forcing a train to be taken out of service, sources said.
On Feb. 25, Burke was arrested for resisting arrest, along with drug and weapons charges, after police caught him lying on a bench and taking up multiple seats on a southbound C train at the Jay St.-MetroTech station in Downtown Brooklyn. Police moved to cuff Burke after he ignored their orders to vacate the train and he kicked one of the officers. They later found a kitchen knife, a crack pipe and a syringe needle on him.