CHELSEA, Manhattan (WABC) — A person of interest was taken into custody Friday, for allegedly fatally shoving a man down the stairs of a Chelsea subway station hours after an earlier encounter with police that resulted in a brief hospital stay.<\/p>\n
Police say a man came up behind the victim, 76-year-old Ross Falzone, and pushed him down the 18th Street station stairs just after 9:30 p.m. on Thursday.<\/p>\n
First responding officers found the Falzone unconscious and unresponsive. Officials say he suffered a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib and was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital just before 3 a.m. on Friday.<\/p>\n
Police say the shoving appeared to be unprovoked, and the death is being investigated a homicide.<\/p>\n
They also revealed that the person of interest had been picked up by police hours earlier outside and East Side police precinct.<\/p>\n
Officers encountered the man acting erratically outside the 17th Precinct stationhouse on East 51st Street at around 3:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Police say he pulled a stick from the garbage and held it as he approached the officers.<\/p>\n
One officer defused the situation, an interaction captured on his body-worn camera and reviewed by police officials, and took the man to Bellevue Hospital in a police cruiser, arriving at the hospital at 3:39 p.m.<\/p>\n
He underwent a psychiatric evaluation at the hospital and was released later that afternoon.<\/p>\n
Detectives say that same man then shoved Falzone to his death about five hours after his release from Bellevue.<\/p>\n
According to authorities, Falzone lived on the Upper West Size.<\/p>\n
The person of interest, described as a man in his 20s or 30s, wearing a black shirt, black shorts and a red and black fanny pack, was taken back into custody for the subway shove on Friday at Penn Station, on the northbound C and E line platform, around 3:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
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