NYC subway shover sentenced to 8 years in prison after victim miraculously survived
A man who shoved a woman in front of a train at a Manhattan subway station 19 months ago will be sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to the horrific crime, the Manhattan District Attorney said on Friday.
The victim miraculously survived the caught-on-camera assault, but the scary attack, along with other incidents of subway violence, put commuters on edge for months.
Video of the Union Square attack in November, 2020, showed an unhinged Aditya Vemulapati, 24, pacing up and down the platform, sizing up the victim and then violently pushing the woman from behind with both hands in the instant before a northbound No. 5 train arrived.
The unsuspecting straphanger, Liliana Sagbaicela, somehow managed to fall beneath the train, landing in the small space between its rolling wheels, even as an eyewitness covered his eyes and recoiled in horror, the video shows.
She emerged intact after two of the 70,000-pound cars passed over her. Despite being underneath a subway car carrying dozens of commuters during morning rush hour, the Brooklyn woman did not break any bones. She received eight stitches to her head.
The train operator managed to stop before the train was fully inside the station, with four of its cars still in the tunnel outside.
Vemulapati, who is homeless, took a running start before he pushed her. He was charged with attempted murder and reckless endangerment.
He pleaded guilty to attempted murder, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg said.
“New Yorkers deserve to feel safe traveling on the subway,” Bragg said in a statement. “Aditya Vemulapati attempted to kill a stranger for no apparent reason, pushing her onto the subway tracks. Today, he is being held accountable for his actions.”
More than 22 million riders pass through the Union Square station every year, transit officials said.
Just this week, a parolee, was charged with attempted murder by cops who said he grabbed and hurled a woman onto subway tracks in the Bronx.
“I didn’t mean to push her onto the tracks. I was drinking. That’s me in the video,” Theodore Ellis, 30, told cops, admitting he shoved the 52-year-old victim at the Jackson Ave.-Westchester Ave. station Sunday afternoon.
The victim was hospitalized with a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder and bruise to her head, according to a criminal court complaint.
In January, Michelle Go, 40, of Manhattan, was killed when she was shoved in front of an R train as it approached a 42nd Street platform in Manhattan. The mentally ill homeless man who confessed to pushing was deemed unfit to stand trial.
