A New York woman who refused to cooperate with prosecutors after a mental patient attacked her on the subway weeks before he pushed a retired NYC teacher to his death appears to have some serious regrets.
“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail,” the unidentified 23-year-old told the New York Post over the weekend.
Now, however, she is saying, “I regret it 100 percent and feel really bad that a man lost his life.”
The woman recounted to the tabloid the terrifying subway attack she suffered at the hands of the repeat offender, Rhamell Burke, 32, who police have accused of fatally pushing a retired teacher down a flight of stairs after being released from a psych ward.
She told the Post she and a friend were on a subway in Manhattan on April 2 when Burke approached them and tried to engage in a conversation, but they tried to switch cars to get away from him.
She said the suspect followed, allegedly yanked her by the back of her head in an attempt to ground her, and then attacked her friend.
“He comes up and he kicks my friend in the back, and basically pushes him through the transition of the cars,” the woman said in a phone interview Friday night.
Luckily, the train soon stopped at the West 4th Street-Washington Square Station in Greenwich Village and the pair fled. But, she said, Burke followed.
“We started running a little bit, but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives,” she told the Post. “They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops and we respected that.”
The woman said the attack left her and her friend “in shock,” but they ultimately chose not to cooperate with prosecutors.
Burke was charged with murder on Friday for allegedly hurling 76-year-old Ross Falzone to his death at a Chelsea subway station Thursday night in what appeared to be a random rage attack.
Police had taken Burke to Bellevue Hospital for “acting erratically” Thursday afternoon before “he was released about an hour later and allegedly launched the deadly unprovoked attack later that night,” according to the Post.
News of the alleged homicide changed the woman’s mindset. She said, “Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
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