NEW YORK >> A 15-year-old boy was arrested Sunday and charged with murder in the stabbing death of a 14-year-old boy in a subway station in Harlem, police said.
The killing, which added to a wave of high-profile attacks that has rattled New York City subway riders in recent months, occurred at the 137th Street-City College station about 3 p.m. Saturday.
When officers arrived at the station, they found the teenager on the northbound platform of the No. 1 line with a stab wound to his abdomen. He was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
They said that they believed the boy who died, whom they later identified as Ethan Reyes of Yonkers, New York, and his attacker knew each other. A dispute between the two teenagers began outside the subway and then spilled inside, police said.
Police did not release the name of the 15-year-old who was arrested Sunday and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
The killing comes after a series of violent episodes in the city’s mass transit system, including the random and unprovoked fatal shooting of a Goldman Sachs employee on his way to brunch in May, a mass shooting on a train that injured at least 23 people in Brooklyn the month before and the fatal shoving of a woman at the Times Square station in January.
Those episodes have subway riders worried about their safety at a fraught moment for the transit system. The attacks have also presented a major political problem for Mayor Eric Adams, who vowed during his campaign to make the city safer.
In surveys, transit riders and employers have said that subway safety is a top concern. About 74% of commuters said they felt less safe using public transit now than they did before the pandemic, according to a March survey by the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group.
In a statement, Richard Davey, president of New York City Transit, thanked detectives for the rapid arrest of a suspect and said: “That he and the victim are said to have known each other further underscores the senseless nature of this tragic incident.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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