{"id":363448,"date":"2026-10-03T03:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T03:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363448\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T03:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T03:16:17","slug":"25-year-old-man-charged-with-murder-in-deadly-subway-stabbing-in-queens-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363448\/","title":{"rendered":"25-year-old man charged with murder in deadly subway stabbing in Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

QUEENS, New York (WABC) — A 25-year-old man has been charged with murder in the stabbing death of a fellow rider<\/a> on a J train in Queens, police said.<\/p>\n

Jyrell Thomas was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation Thursday morning. He was described by police as emotionally disturbed.<\/p>\n

He was later arrested on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon.<\/p>\n

Police said Thomas was pacing back and forth inside the train car and appeared agitated before approaching Mesias Lojano, 59, just after 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Lojano tried to walk away before Thomas swung at him with a kitchen knife, according to police.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bismarck Villareyna witnessed the attack and recorded video aboard the train.<\/p>\n

“I heard, oh somebody is being attacked, somebody being attacked. So I pulled out my phone, started walking, as you see in the video,” Villareyna said.<\/p>\n

The violence eventually spilled onto a J train platform, where bystanders chased Thomas.<\/p>\n

“There was an old man behind me – hold him! Hold him! Hold him! And that’s when he started running. And then I started running after him,” Villareyna said.<\/p>\n

Villareyna said he considered trying to physically intervene but was concerned that he could also be stabbed.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to kick him, but I say, you know, if I kick him and I miss or he stabbed me then. So I was getting my position. I tried to record to get, you know, evidence.”<\/p>\n

Villareyna continued following Thomas and directed officers to him. Thomas climbed onto a rooftop, where he had to be lifted and carried away.<\/p>\n

“Then he stopped there and he sat down and he was saying, ‘oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it.’ But in some of my videos, I was, I was upset,” Villareyna said.<\/p>\n

Thomas has one prior arrest, stemming from a robbery early last month in which he stole $23 of merchandise from a Bronx Target. He was charged with petit larceny, obstruction of governmental administration and criminal possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n

This is the sixth homicide in the subway system this year. There were four murders in the system all of last year, and 10 in 2024.<\/p>\n

There has been a 7% increase in assaults in the subway this year, with 441 vs 410 at this time last year.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"QUEENS, New York (WABC) — A 25-year-old man has been charged with murder in the stabbing death of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[134894,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-363448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-134894","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}