\u00a0Stay connected with community stories that matter: Visit our homepage\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nHe’s a nice kid, bro. I don’t know why they did that to him,”\u00a0one man who didn’t want to give his name\u00a0said, with tears streaming down his face. “I knew him when he was a young boy. His father used to own the barber shop. I miss him.”<\/p>\n
Rodriguez worked security at a hotel in midtown close to the 7th\u00a0Avenue, 53rd\u00a0Street subway station where he was shot in the chest Saturday afternoon. Paramedics rushed to save him, but he was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t think it would be somebody I know and when I seen it on the news, I didn’t think it would be right here,”\u00a0childhood friend Devante Hall said.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez had two brothers, including Derick, his fraternal twin who now lives in Texas and enlisted in the Army.<\/p>\n
Derick told The New York Times, “It’s like a black hole in your heart,” adding, “It is grief, but it is something deeper because this is your half.”<\/p>\n
The NYPD is still searching for the suspect, seen in surveillance pictures in a red tracksuit and black face covering. They say he should be considered armed and dangerous. Police say the two men got into an argument on the platform shortly after noon. The gunfire set off chaos as hundreds rushed to get out.<\/p>\n
“We started running and all the other people started following suit,”\u00a0Christopher Myron said. He was on a Queens-bound E train as the shots rang out.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s murder is the seventh homicide of the year in New York City transit this year. That’s more than the four people killed in all of 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Honestly, before that I thought it was fairly safe,”\u00a0Myron said. “After that, to be honest, a little nervous to get on the subway right now.”<\/p>\n
AN NYPD spokesperson told PIX11 News that 2025 was the safest year on record in transit, with 2026 shaping up to be the second safest year.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to PIX11.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIDTOWN (PIX11) \u2014 Family and friends of a man murdered Saturday inside a busy midtown subway\u00a0station are speaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-377805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377805","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=377805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}