A gruesome murder on the subway shows just how far things have spiraled.
It was like something out of the horrors of New York City’s past. At 7:30 yesterday morning, a man approached a woman sleeping on a Coney Island F train. The man proceeded to light the woman on fire, according to police, and then calmly watched her burn to death as transit police attempted to extinguish the flames.
A suspect has been taken into custody. But the killing marks a gruesome milestone—11 murders in New York’s subways in 2024, the highest figure in decades. It adds to the pervasive sense of unease on many people’s daily commutes. Transit statistics show that other kinds of violent crime, too, have risen on a per-rider basis, leaving millions of New Yorkers worrying about whether they will be next.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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