The grief-stricken son of a 59-year-old man killed in an unprovoked stabbing aboard a Queens subway train during rush hour demanded justice as he planned his slain father’s funeral Thursday.
An Ecuadorian immigrant, Mesias Lojano worked hard in construction to build a life for his wife, their six children and four grandchildren. But all it took was a chance encounter with an emotionally disturbed rider on a J train for him to lose it all, his son said.
“My father was a good man. He was a hardworking, honest man,” the victim’s son, 39-year-old William Lojano, told the Daily News Thursday. “I feel very sad. The truth is, I can’t think. I can’t talk about it. I want justice.”
Lojano, who was on his way to a funeral home to plan his father’s service, held a picture of his father and wept as he spoke to The News outside the brick home in Corona where he lived with his father.
He said he watched cellphone video of his father’s killer, Jyrell Thomas, jump on his father and repeatedly stab him.
Mesias Lojano
“I watched the video. Somebody attacked my father. He killed him. I want justice,” William said.
Lojano was stabbed three times in the upper body and once in the neck as an unprovoked fight with his attacker aboard the Jamaica-bound train spilled onto the platform at the Woodhaven Blvd. station around 5:20 p.m. Wednesday.
Thomas, 25, was chased down by horrified onlookers and arrested about a block from the station. On Thursday, he was charged with murder and weapon possession and was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.
“It was no accident,” the victim’s son said about Thomas’ horrific attack. “He didn’t have to do it.”
NYPD officers investigate after a man was fatally stabbed at the Woodhaven Blvd. subway station in Queens, New York, on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
Surveillance video reviewed by the Daily News shows dozens of commuters racing out of the elevated subway stop following the bloody stabbing.
The killer, dressed in a black hoodie and armed with what appeared to be a large kitchen knife, exited the station with the crowd, descending the stairs right behind a woman holding a small child’s hand. The knife was later recovered by cops.
Thomas was tracked down to the roof of a nearby single-story garage a block away from the subway station, where cops took him into custody. A second video obtained by The News shows the suspect lying on the roof of a garage as cops climb over a chain-link fence to make the arrest.
Thomas lives in the South Bronx. Cops described him as emotionally disturbed, although his only prior interaction with NYPD cops was an arrest for petty larceny last month in the Bronx, officials said.