A woman was slashed while standing on a subway platform in Manhattan but a man who saw what happened immediately rushed over to help.
“The 54-year-old Brooklyn woman was slashed while on a platform inside the 14th Street-Union Square station just after 10 p.m. Wednesday,” ABC 7 reported.
Sean Conaboy was waiting for the train when he noticed the knife and watched as the woman was attacked. However, he did not run away but jumped on the suspect and more than likely saved the woman’s life.
The clip showed the man, wearing dark clothing and red shoes, walking toward the woman with what appeared to be a knife in his hand before moving out of the camera’s frame.
Seconds later, the woman was seen falling to the ground as the suspect was on top of her. It was then Conaboy ran over and pushed the suspect off the woman:
When the suspect got back up and moved toward her, Conaboy pounced on him again.
“I was looking at the track, she’s the nearest person to the edge of that platform,” he recalled. “I noticed her. And suddenly she got yanked backwards and screamed, and this dagger or knife very quickly appeared and made an arching sweeping turn. I knew someone was being attacked.”
According to authorities, Joshua Nazario, 22, approached from behind and allegedly stabbed the woman several times in her back and chest.
Conaboy said her scream was enough to compel him to intervene.
“I just jumped him, I just tackled him, jumped on his back. And that took us down to the platform surface. I’m trying desperately to keep him down, facedown, because I know that if he gets up, or if he can turn on me, and he has that knife now, I’m a potential victim,” he noted.
Conaboy works as a freelance camera operator for CBC News in New York City, according to the outlet.
The victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital with non-life threatening injuries and is expected to recover, the ABC article read, adding the suspect was arrested and charged with four counts of assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Although Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) has promised a safer system, Conaboy is not convinced.
“What’s your defense? Your best defense is to not be there, but we all have lives that we have, jobs, to go to,” he noted. “We have homes to go to, places to go to. If New York is going to reopen and expect people to go out to restaurants and theaters, you can’t have this happen.”
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