Attack With Electric Saw In Subway

In a crime that seemed to belong in a horror movie, not the Upper West Side of 2006, a 64-year-old Manhattan man was brutally attacked early yesterday morning by an ex-convict wielding two electric handsaws inside a subway station, police said.Michael Steinberg, a postal worker, was on his way to work when he was assaulted by a man who allegedly stole the battery-powered saws from a construction crew working inside the subway station at 110th Street and Broadway, police said. The assailant menaced the construction crew and other subway riders with the saws, before turning on Mr. Steinberg, who suffered a punctured lung and a broken rib in the attack, authorities said. He told the Associated Press it felt like the assailant “was trying to cut through me.”After the saw attack in the subway station, the assailant allegedly fled to a location near the intersection of West 86th Street and West End Avenue, where he reportedly punched another individual in the face. Police took Tareyton Williams, 33, into custody shortly before 6 a.m., and linked him to both assaults after witnesses identified him in lineups. He subsequently was charged with attempted murder, robbery, and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.Williams previously served time in state prisons on drug related charges, police said. He was imprisoned for attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in 1992 and in 1998, according to information obtained from the state’s Department of Corrections. He was conditionally released from Fulton Correctional Facility in 2001, and discharged from parole in 2002.Police said Williams, who most recently lived on Jerome Street in the Bronx, did not indicate a motive in yesterday’s attack.But speaking to The New York Sun from his room at St.Luke’s Hospital yesterday, Mr. Steinberg relived his attack in vivid detail, and said his attacker “hack sawed” his body as he lay bleeding on the ground. “I think he was out of his mind,” Mr. Steinberg said.Officials said yesterday’s attack occurred around 3:30 a.m., as Mr. Steinberg was traveling from his home on West 113th Street to an early-morning shift at the Peter Stuyvesant postal office on East 14th Street, where he worked as a general clerk.Yesterday, transit officials said electricians from Five Star Electric were working on the tracks of the No. 1 train inside the 110th Street station just before the attack occurred. According to an MTA spokesman, Paul Fleuranges, the contractors were doing insulation work associated with the installation of monitors that will convey train arrival information to subway passengers.By the workers’ account, they had just emerged from the tracks to avoid an oncoming train, and placed down their tools inside a roped-off area when Williams reportedly stole the saws. Recalling the attack, Mr. Steinberg said he heard screaming as he descended into the station but said he could not see what was going on. “They got away, I didn’t,” he said.Breathing with difficulty due to his injuries, Mr. Steinberg said he was surprised to be alive, and, choking back emotion, said he managed to retain consciousness throughout his assault by praying he would survive, and by focusing on images of his wife and 88-year-old mother.But he criticized the contractors working in the station for not assisting him earlier, and likened the attack to the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, when 38 witnesses notoriously did not prevent her killing. “I screamed and begged, and screamed and begged, and no one came to my aid at all,” he said. “I almost died and six to eight workers did nothing.”Yesterday, as co-workers streamed in and out of his hospital room, colleagues expressed shock over the incident. “At this point, people are just in shock and hoping for his speedy recovery,” a vice president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, Chuck Zlatkin, said. In a prepared statement on behalf of the 8,000-member union, where Mr. Steinberg is a longtime shop steward, the president, Clarice Torrence, pointed to vulnerabilities affecting workers who travel to their jobs at all hours of the day.Police said subway crime is down and referred to the police department’s CompStat data, which indicated 1,217 subway incidents were reported so far this year, down 24.7% from 1,617 reported last year at this time.Asked if subway crime worried him, Mr. Steinberg said it did not — until now. “I wasn’t nervous, to be honest with you. I didn’t think this would happen to me.”

Attack With Electric Saw In Subway

Attack With Electric Saw In Subway

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