A young woman says she regrets refusing to cooperate with prosecutors after a violent subway attack because the same man is now accused of shoving an elderly stranger to his death inside a Manhattan station.
“I regret it 100%, and I actually feel really bad that a man lost his life,” the 23-year-old woman told the New York Post.
“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.”
The suspect, identified as Rhamell Burke, is charged with second-degree murder after police say he shoved 76-year-old Ross Falzone down a staircase at the 18th Street subway station in Chelsea.
Surveillance footage reviewed by investigators allegedly shows Burke quickly closing in behind Falzone near the station entrance around 9:30 p.m. Thursday before violently pushing the elderly man down the stairs.
Falzone vanished down the stairwell while the attacker walked away from the scene, according to police accounts.
The footage reportedly shows the suspect calmly crossing the street afterward and even gesturing for traffic to stop before moving out of frame.
The victim, a retired high school teacher who lived alone, suffered devastating injuries in the fall.
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According to the New York Times, Falzone landed on his head and sustained a traumatic brain injury along with a fractured spine and fractured rib.
Officers found him unconscious and unresponsive at the bottom of the staircase before rushing him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“He’s just a helpless old guy,” neighbor Marc Stager told the Post. “What a cowardly and idiotic thing to do.”
The killing came just weeks after Burke allegedly attacked the young woman and her friend on another Manhattan subway train.
The woman told the Post the April 2 encounter started after Burke approached them and tried to chat them up while they were riding through Manhattan.
She and her friend attempted to avoid him by moving toward another subway car.
According to the woman, Burke became aggressive almost immediately.
“He comes up, and he kicks my friend in the back, and basically pushes him through the transition of the cars,” she told the paper.
Her friend panicked and ran, she said, while Burke allegedly grabbed her by the head.
“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,” she recalled.
“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 pair eventually got off at the West 4th Street–Washington Square station in Greenwich Village, but the woman said Burke followed them out of the train.
“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,” she detailed.
“They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops, and we respected that.”
But despite the arrest, the woman chose not to move forward with prosecutors.
That decision now hangs over the aftermath of Falzone’s death.
Burke had already been arrested multiple times before the deadly subway shove, according to reports.
Authorities had picked him up four times this year alone before Falzone was killed.
In February, Burke was arrested on allegations including robbery, resisting arrest, and assaulting a Port Authority police officer.
The incident unfolded Feb. 14 at the Seventh Avenue and West 23rd Street station in Chelsea after police responded to reports of a man carrying a shovel who allegedly smashed subway doors and hurled a trash can onto the tracks.
Three Port Authority officers were reportedly injured during that arrest.
Burke was later arrested again in April on allegations he assaulted another stranger, according to the Post.
Hours before Falzone was shoved down the stairs, Burke had once again been taken into custody.
Police sources told the Post officers encountered Burke Thursday afternoon outside an NYPD station house where he was allegedly “acting erratically” while holding a stick pulled from a garbage can.
Officers transported him to Bellevue Hospital after classifying him as an “emotionally disturbed person,” according to the report.
One NYPD officer expressed frustration to the Post over how quickly Burke was released.
“We brought him in at 3:30 p.m. and he was released just before 5 p.m. Meanwhile, if you or I walked into Bellevue for a headache, it would take 8 hours just to be seen,” the officer reportedly said.
“NYPD uses its involuntary removal powers all the time. And they just get right out with an Advil.”
Police sources told the paper Burke was back on the street about an hour after arriving at the hospital.
Roughly five hours later, investigators say Falzone was dead.
Burke had also appeared in court Friday morning for a hearing connected to an unrelated assault case.
He was allowed to leave because authorities had not yet linked him to the fatal subway attack.
After the unprovoked homicide, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “horrified” and ordered a review into whether the attack could have been prevented.
“New Yorkers deserve answers,” Mamdani said in a statement. “That is why I’ve directed NYC Health + Hospitals to conduct both an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy and a comprehensive review of their psychiatric evaluation and discharge protocols.”
Police later located Burke at Penn Station and took him into custody.
He appeared in court Saturday and is being held without bail on a second-degree murder charge connected to Falzone’s death.
