It’s the great subway fear lurking in the back of our minds, at least the minds of the overly paranoid: What if some random deranged person tries to push me in front of the train? It’s happened before, perhaps most famously with Kendra Webdale in 1999. Sure, this frightening scenario can be avoided entirely by waiting for said train far from the edge of the platform, say, with your back against the wall. But then you would miss the excitement of seeing the train rumble into the station, its light signaling to you from down the track, “Worry no more, for your long, sweaty, waiting-for-the-subway nightmare is almost over.” No — we must stand near the edge and accept the risks that come with it.
When “fashion-industry honcho” Ute Linhart was pushed into an incoming subway train on Wednesday night, she was standing “a few feet away” from the edge. A seemingly unstable man who had been making menacing gestures at other straphangers approached Linhart, stared at her face, and shoved. Linhart survived — the train smacked her back onto the platform — but with broken ribs, a broken arm, a broken cheek, and a punctured lung. She has no idea why the man, Cipriani cook José Rojas, did what he did. Neither does Rojas, who was drunk and told investigators, “I don’t know why I pushed her.” Understandably, that’s not very satisfying for Linhart. We can only imagine what would happen if she had the chance to face the man who tried to end her life.
[Linhart] said that if she encountered her assailant again, she’d want to know why he acted like a lunatic.
“I would say ‘Hi, what’s wrong with you?’ ” she said. “What’s your problem?”
Sounds more like the way you would address a friend in an irritable mood than someone who pushed you into a subway train for no reason at all, but okay.
