Former Marine Fatally Choking Man on NYC Subway Sparks Fierce Crime Debate

A fatal encounter on a New York City subway has sparked a tense debate about the rise in crime in America and what residents should do in response.

On Monday, a man, who has not yet been formally identified, was described as behaving erratically, threatening passengers on a Manhattan subway when a former Marine approached him and put him in a chokehold to restrain him. As the train pulled into the Broadway-Lafayette station, the 30-year-old man fell unconscious. He was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

NYPD told Newsweek an autopsy has been slated to determine what the cause of death was. Multiple outlets reported that the 24-year-old former Marine was taken into custody but released without charges while the investigation remains open.

Following the incident, police have said that the deceased man had a documented mental health history as well as a criminal history that includes more than 40 prior arrests. Authorities had an active warrant for his arrest from a felony assault charge he allegedly committed in November 2021.

Crime in NYC

The incident is one of many that happen on New York City's subways every month. In February, the New York Police Department (NYPD) reported 169 cases of major crime on the nation's largest subway system.

Crime has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic. After years of decline, the U.S. saw a 28.64 percent increase between 2019 and 2020, according to data from the World Bank. That trend continued into 2021 when early reporting from the New York Times showed that the murder rate in the U.S. was up 18 percent from the same period in 2020.

Concerns over the spike in crime became a key voting issue in the November midterms and political candidates responded to those fears, campaigning on platforms of public safety and releasing ads focused on violent crime.

A Pew Research Poll conducted in the weeks before the 2022 elections found that six-in-ten registered voters said violent crime is very important in their decisions about who to vote for. Republican voters, 73 percent, and Black voters, 81 percent, were particularly likely to vote based on the crime rate. Despite those figures, data from the Brennan Center for Justice shows that murder has risen equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats and that so-called "red" states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all.

Civilian Response to Crime

The surge in crime rates has left many Americans lost about what should happen to people who commit crimes if politicians and police aren't handling crimes. In response to Monday's fatal encounter, some have applauded the former Marine for taking matters into his own hands and doing something about the behavior on the subway.

"NYC is minus one career criminal who had a habit of terrorizing Americans. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 we must exterminate the scum of society," Twitter user @CurtisMyer wrote about the subway incident.

"People have had enough," @DETECTIVE4LIFE tweeted.

At the same time, there are also people calling for murder charges against the former Marine.

In a Twitter thread, user @absurdistwords criticized headlines for using a passive voice that avoided putting the former Marine as the assailant of the incident, describing the death as "vigilante murder."

"'Fight becomes deadly' 'Man dead after confrontation' 'Man dies after being put in chokehold by marine,'" they wrote. "Not 'Marine kills homeless man on Subway' which is exactly what happened."

Civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger agreed, tweeting, "It's as if the 'chokehold' were completely disembodied from the former marine who choked a houseless man suffering from mental health issues to death on the subway so far w/o any consequence."

Former New York state Representative Yuh-Line Niou also pointed out that the death from Monday's incident changes the debate about whether the 24-year-old should be apprehended.

"The man on the subway DID die. At the hands of a former marine. Who knows exactly what a chokehold does," she wrote.

Newsweek reached out to the Manhattan District Attorney's office via email for comment.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Hochul had just touted a drop in the city's subway crime earlier this year, saying that major crime on the system fell 16 percent since the city implemented a new safety initiative in October.

"That is a trend that we can feel good about," Hochul said at a January press conference, "as long as that continues to hold."

The state has committed more than $62 million to help the city with the initiative that put more police officers in the system to combat rates of major crimes.