While we mentioned two subway-related fatalities yesterday, it turns out two other men also died in the subway system—one of them was apparently crushed to death at the Sixth Avenue L station. more ›

A group of emotionally scarred commuters who were trapped on an A train for eight hours overnight during last year's Christmas weekend blizzard are suing the MTA. Nearly 500 souls were stuck aboard the train when it ground to a halt between the Aqueduct and Rockaway Boulevard stations around 1 a.m. on December 26th, as three feet of snow piled up around them. Desperation quickly set in: Twitter user OMJohnnyG wrote, "Son!!! I wanna go home!!! Dudes on the train talking about cannibalism lol I want out!!!" more ›

An off-duty cop shot and apprehended a suspected groper in a subway station in Harlem today. The shooting happened on the platform of an A train at the 125th Street station just after 12:30 p.m. According to the News, a mother screamed that her teen daughter had just been groped, and a second woman also came forward that she had been groped. The officer spotted the suspect sitting on a bench in front of the train: “As he approaches [the suspect] the officer identifies himself as a police officer,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “A struggle ensues and one round is discharged from the officer’s gun, striking the suspect in the [buttocks].“ more ›

A man was killed by an oncoming southbound A train earlier today at the West 4th Street stop in Greenwich Village. The unidentified man was in his 50's and became pinned underneath the train around 3:22 p.m., according to the Post. He was pronounced dead at the scene after the train was evacuated in the station. It's still unclear whether the man fell or jumped onto the tracks. more ›

Most of us catch Friday Night Fights on TV at the end of a long day in a dank, cool bar, or at the apartment of that friend who can't resist charging the Pay Per View to his Amex. But riders of the A train yesterday didn't have to leave their seat to satisfy their bloodlust, as full-on fisticuffs broke out at the Broadway Junction stop in East New York. Thanks to the miracles of technology, we have two angles from which to assess the action. more ›

A man who lept onto the subway tracks to retrieve his cellphone was struck and killed yesterday by a southbound A train at the 14th Street station at 8th Avenue. 60-year-old Vit Lukacik of Queens was hit around 3:20 p.m. and police sources told DNAinfo that that he "didn't realize how close the train was." Lukacik was pronounced dead at the scene, and service was restored a little more than an hour later. The Post denotes the 14th Street A,C,E station as being in Greenwich Village, while DNAinfo states that it's in Chelsea. more ›

There are three kinds of pests the city will never be lacking in: Yankees fans, bed bugs and racist morons. One particularly dumb racist attacked a Sikh MTA employee in Brooklyn on an A train on Memorial Day, knocking out three of his teeth. "He was saying, 'You are the brother of Osama.' I said, 'I am not Osama. I have nothing to do with him!'" said Queens resident Jiwan Singh, an Indian immigrant who moved to the US over 30 years ago. more ›

Earlier today we received a tip that a man had become trapped by an A train on 125th Street. The report stated, "ESU advising this is a space case, aided's leg is trapped between the train and the s/b platform." We contacted the MTA, and spokeswoman Deirdre Parker told us: more ›

Northbound A train service above 168th Street stopped for over an hour this afternoon as police investigated a possible suicide attempt at the 175th Street station. The MTA tells us a woman appears to have jumped in front of the train at 2:23 p.m. and has been taken to Harlem Hospital. Her condition is currently unclear. Expect residual delays for the next hour. more ›

Among the many horror stories to come out of last week's blizzard was the report that hundreds of commuters were trapped on an A train for well over six hours in the midst of the chaos. Now, a Manhattan lawyer wants to get in on the stalled-train litigation action: "No one's trying to get rich off this...This is to hold the MTA accountable for what happened. We're really trying to get the MTA's attention for the average New Yorker," lawyer Aymen Aboushi told the News. more ›

The stalled A train that had passengers trapped inside for seven hours may have gotten all the attention, but behind that train there was another train, driven by a motorman who repeatedly risked his life so that the train could crawl forward. Yann Willam Hicks says he had to get out of the train 20 times to clear snow from the metal signal arms that had become frozen in the storm. "I did this on the bridges above the water!" Hicks tells the Post. "We'd travel for a bit, get stuck, I'd get out, then we'd travel again... Every time I jumped off the train, I couldn't see the third rail—I had no idea where it was... I told the dispatcher, 'You've got to be kidding! You're sending us out in this stuff? This is suicide!" But it was all worth it to get everybody to Aqueduct station in the middle of the night in a blizzard! more ›

Hundreds of commuters, most coming back from JFK last night, have been trapped on an A train since roughly 1 a.m. Please be patient! (We've also been told that passengers have been stuck on the N train near Bay Parkway since 9 p.m. last night.) The A train, which is stuck above ground at the Aqueduct Race Track station, is packed with travelers who were turned away from the airport last night. With the Air Train shut down due to the blizzard, many of them were escorted to the A train via shuttle bus. But once on board, they didn't get very far. They could, however, pass the time with Twitter. Here are some transmissions from the "dead" A train: more ›

Eddie Crespo, the MTA officer who appeared to be involved in last week's subway attack on an imam, will not be charged after all, a grand jury decided yesterday. His fiance's brother, Albert Melendez, meanwhile will be charged in the case but on a misdemeanor charge, not the felony counts he was facing. So maybe it was just a bump that kicked off the mess and not plain old bigotry? more ›

The story of the imam attacked on the A train earlier this week has gotten a new twist: one of the men accused of administering the beating, Eddie Crespo, is an MTA B&T officer. more ›

The MTA has announced delays on the A, B, C and D lines "due to a police investigation at the 96th Street Station" and "a temporary suspension in both directions" on those lines between 59th Street and 125th Street. It turns out that a man was killed by an uptown A train at 96th Street and Central Park West. more ›

The University of Oregon's all male acapella group, called On The Rocks, recently Rickrolled an A train—getting on at Chambers and headed up towards 14th Street, they managed to cover the entire song. more ›

First reports of a pregnant woman being removed from an L train and taken to the hospital yesterday morning—now news that a man had a heart attack on an A train at Columbus Circle last night! And he was saved—thanks to the efforts of cops, other passengers, and a heart defibrillator. more ›

According to NYPD statistics, overall subway crime dropped by 3% in 2008, with murders down to two from four in 2007. There were an average 6.3 major felonies a day last year, compared with 7.4 in 2006 (there was an average of 17 in 1997). But robberies are on the rise: 823 occurred last year, up from 796 in '07. And there were three rapes reported last year, as opposed to just one in '07. Still, the NYPD's John Hall tells the Post crime is "so low that it's getting more and more difficult to keep it there," and attributes the stats to a crackdown on people walking between moving cars, which criminals do when trolling for victims. more ›

A Queens woman who says a police officer used excessive force when he pepper sprayed her in the face during an arrest is suing the city for $3 million. According to the Daily News, Naeema Screven was rushing to catch the A train at the Broadway station in Brooklyn when she ducked under the yellow tape that divided the staircase into "up" and "down." That's a no-no. When she reached the bottom, she was stopped by Officer Elix Hernandez and asked to show identification. more ›

The lactivists were at it again today! WNBC reports that to help kick-off World Breastfeeding Week, "breast-feeding advocates boarded an A train on Friday for a ride from the Bronx to Brooklyn to call attention to a mother's right to nurse her baby." Since breastfeeding in public has been legal for 14 years, their main goal was to get NY lawmakers "to pass legislation that would require health care providers to tell pregnant women about the benefits of breast-feeding before and after delivery." State Senator Liz Krueger was amongst the group today, and noted that the bill would in part "ban commercial interests from pressuring new mothers into using formula." more ›

They’ll deny it, but most college students who write plays harbor some secret fantastic hope that their new opus will be hailed as the arrival of a fresh new voice and open on Broadway to triumphant acclaim. It obviously never happens, except when it does: 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, originally from Washington Heights, conceived the musical In the Heights as a sophomore at Wesleyan. After graduating, the show, a hip hop and salsa-inflected homage to his old ‘hood, caught the eye of the producers behind RENT and Avenue Q. It opened Off Broadway last year to rave reviews, packed houses and far too many awards to schlep home on the A train. Now the Broadway incarnation is bounding through previews, having kept most of the original Off Broadway cast, which includes Miranda himself in one of the starring roles. The official opening night is March 9th; ticket prices vary. more ›

Train muralist James Top (aka JEE 2) was part of the legendary Odd Partners in the 1970s. The Brooklyn crew bombed with throw ups and block letters; they were highly regarded and had a strong presence in the city. These days Top has taken his art indoors -- teaching a graffiti class in the Bronx and, this weekend, opening his first New York exhibit. more ›

The NYPD may have the anti-graffiti task force, but with many graffiti crimes perpetrated in the subway tunnels, the NYC Transit Authority has created its own anti-graffiti team. The Daily News tagged along with the Eagle Team, a "surveillance squad quietly formed three months ago." more ›

Rafael Cruz, whose beating on an A train at the hands - and feet - of a group of teenag girls was captured on video, will press charges with the police. Sources tell the Daily News that Cruz "filed a formal complaint with the NYPD Transit Bureau" last night. As some people wondered if the video was fake, one man, Kevin Belvin, recognized his daughter Kierra Brown as one of the girls seen in the... more ›

The 17-year-old girl who filmed the filmed a group of teen girls beating up a subway rider on an A train last month has met with the police yesterday. Kajdera Holmes's lawyer told the Daily News, "She regrets not doing more to help the victim." Ward has also said that Holmes, who was arrested in September for assaulting a 24-year-old woman on a J train, had nothing to do with the attack, though she and... more ›

We take this to be definitive proof that the video of a group of teen girls beating a man on an A train was not staged: The victim has emerged. Rafael Cruz, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident who is a manager at a Midtown H&M, told the Post, "I'm trying to get over it. It happened a month ago." Cruz isn't sure if he will press charges, noting, "Teenagers are allowed to make mistakes, but... more ›

The police are continuing to investigate the video of a man being beaten by a group of girls on an A train. While there's still debate about whether the filmed attack was real or staged, this much is known: The teen who filmed the incident, Kajdera Holmes, has retained a lawyer to speak to reporters. The Daily News has two articles about the incident. The News had asked its readers if they knew any of... more ›

After a video of a man being harassed and beaten by a group of teens was publicized by The Smoking Gun, some wonder if the tape is real. The main reason why most people suspect it could be staged is because the teen who filmed the incident is an aspiring filmmaker. Seventeen-year-old Kadejra Holmes told The Smoking Gun she didn't have anything to do with the attack and then took the video off YouTube. Her... more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual elevator rescue on Washington Ave. in Brooklyn, a pipe explosion on Richmond Terrace on Staten Island, and a person fatally struck by an A train at Van Siclen and Pitken Ave. in Brooklyn.
• NYC already has 91,000 practicing attorneys, but we can expect a lot more. Nearly 11,000 freshly minted JDs sat for the bar this summer and more than 70% of them passed.
• A 63-year-old man riding his bike north up 6th Ave. today struck an open car door and was thrown into oncoming traffic. He was killed when run over by a truck.
• Debbie Almontaser lost her legal bid to prevent the City from permanently replacing her as the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy.
• If you were wondering how much the Chelsea Hotel would change under new management, cops were recently called because "manager" Glennon Travis suspected someone had been smoking weed in one of the hallways.
• The lights illuminating the catenary cables of the Brooklyn Bridge will soon be replaced with environmentally friendly energy efficient bulbs.
• Sometimes even Chelsea Clinton can't get a seat in a crowded Starbucks, and is forced to type away on her laptop while sitting on the floor.
• Serendipity 3 has re-opened after a three-week closure by the City's Dept. of Health for violations that included mice and roaches.

The unofficial first and second rules of sane subway rides might be "Do not talk to anyone" and "Don't look anyone in the eye." The Smoking Gun found a crazy video of an adult being beat up by a group of teenage girls on an A train. The adult, who is white, was somehow roped into a shouty exchange with the girls, who are black, and high school student Kadejra Holmes filmed the exchange,... more ›