A 23-year-old woman shared her harrowing experience of a subway attack by a repeat offender who later allegedly pushed a retired New York City teacher to his death just hours after being released from a psychiatric ward.
The shaken victim told The Post that on April 2, she and a friend were riding a Manhattan subway when Rhamell Burke approached them. They tried to end the conversation and quickly moved to another car to escape him.
She described how Burke followed them closely, allegedly grabbed her by the back of the head in an attempt to throw her to the ground, and kicked her friend in the back.
“He comes up and he kicks my friend in the back, basically pushing him through the transition of the cars,” she said during a phone interview on Friday night.
“My friend freaks out, runs away, and then he grabs me by the head and pushes my head down, trying to like maybe throw me on the ground or something. But I didn’t, I resisted as much as I could. I didn’t fall, and then I immediately opened up the car and then ran towards my friend.”
The train fortunately stopped at the West 4th Street-Washington Square Station in Greenwich Village, allowing the frightened pair to escape quickly.
As they hurried away, the woman noticed Burke following them.
“We get off at West 4th Street and then we turn around and we see he’s following us. That’s when I was like: ‘Oh, like, this is scary. Like, why is he following us?'” she recalled, describing him as a “buff guy.”
“We started running a little bit, but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives. They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops and we respected that.”
She explained that the incident left her and her friend in shock, leading them to initially decide against cooperating with prosecutors. She now regrets that choice, especially after Burke was charged with murder for allegedly pushing 76-year-old Ross Falzone to his death at a Chelsea subway station on Thursday night.
Police had taken Burke to Bellevue Hospital for “acting erratically” on Thursday afternoon but released him about an hour later. He allegedly committed the deadly attack later that night.
“I regret it 100% and I actually feel really bad that a man lost his life,” the woman admitted.
“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”
Burke faced an assault charge for the April attack and was granted supervised release at his arraignment.
