Earlier than the paths of Jason Volz and Carlton McPherson collided in a horrible second on a Harlem subway platform on Monday, their lives had gave the impression to be heading in reverse instructions.
Mr. McPherson had been hospitalized not less than half a dozen occasions since final yr for psychological well being remedy, in keeping with somebody who has seen a few of his medical data. A neighbor within the Bronx stated he generally slept in a hallway closet in his grandmother’s constructing as a result of she wouldn’t let him into her condo. Final October, a person whom prosecutors imagine to be Mr. McPherson — he had the identical identify and delivery yr — was charged with beating a Brooklyn homeless shelter worker with a cane.
Mr. Volz, 54, was recovering from dependancy and had additionally endured homelessness, however had gotten sober two years in the past and had simply moved into a brand new condo, his ex-wife stated.
On Monday evening, the police say, Mr. McPherson, 24, walked as much as Mr. Volz on the uptown platform of the one hundred and twenty fifth Road station on Lexington Avenue and shoved him in entrance of an oncoming No. 4 prepare.
Responding cops, who had been on one other a part of the platform, discovered him lifeless beneath the prepare. His demise was a recurrence of the final word New York Metropolis nightmare, and one other instance of the issue of stopping violence on the subway regardless of years of efforts by state and metropolis authorities to maintain individuals combating extreme psychological sickness out of the transit system.
Mayor Eric Adams, who has watched crime within the subway largely defy his makes an attempt to rein it in, sounded a be aware of defeat on Tuesday, acknowledging that the presence of cops had not been sufficient to cease Monday’s assault.
“While you’re coping with a extreme psychological well being disaster or if you wish to take part in legal conduct,” he stated at a information convention, “now we have now reached a degree the place now we have these so emboldened by that they’ll preserve doing their actions, that the uniform not means something.”
Mr. Adams’s tenure has been challenged again and again by spasms of subway violence and the damaged system for serving to homeless individuals with critical psychological sickness.
He had been in workplace for less than two weeks in January 2022 when a girl named Michelle Go was pushed in entrance of a prepare in Instances Sq. by a homeless man affected by schizophrenia. The person had been hospitalized greater than 20 occasions and discharged with out being stabilized. The subsequent month, Mr. Adams introduced an aggressive plan to evict homeless individuals from the subway system.
Later that yr, after months of elevated crime within the subway, Mr. Adams declared that the town would start taking mentally in poor health individuals to hospitals involuntarily in the event that they have been too sick to take care of themselves, even when they posed no rapid menace to others.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has additionally made repeated efforts to tame violence and homelessness within the subway and to assist mentally in poor health homeless individuals get psychiatric remedy. And each leaders periodically flood the subway with regulation enforcement personnel — metropolis and state cops and Nationwide Guard troopers — to reassure anxious commuters.
The state and metropolis say that over the previous two years they’ve moved greater than a thousand homeless individuals out of the subway and into shelters, hospitals or housing. New insurance policies have instructed metropolis and state public hospitals to maintain homeless psychiatric sufferers till they’re really stabilized. And but the issues persist.
Within the final quarter of 2021, simply earlier than Mr. Adams took workplace, there have been 1,766 unsheltered individuals on the town’s social-service caseload whom outreach staff had first encountered within the subway. By the final quarter of 2023, that quantity had doubled, to three,527.
Whereas surveys present that fears about crime are excessive, the information paint a blended image about whether or not the subway has change into extra harmful lately. Charges of some crimes, together with felony assault, have risen above prepandemic ranges. However main crime additionally decreased in 2023, earlier than ticking up once more up to now this yr in contrast with the identical interval final yr.
Final fall, the town and state unveiled one other initiative to ship groups of clinicians paired with cops into the subway in Manhattan to involuntarily take away mentally in poor health individuals who seem like in disaster.
Within the first 80 days of the groups’ operation, they took 15 individuals to hospitals for psychiatric causes, stated Brian Stettin, the mayor’s senior adviser for extreme psychological sickness. One other 15 individuals have been hospitalized for medical points, he stated. The governor just lately introduced plans to broaden the operation.
Mr. Stettin stated on Tuesday that a part of the stubbornness of the issue is that some mentally in poor health individuals resist remedy.
“We had a few frustrations with individuals who have been stabilized to the place we couldn’t preserve them on the hospital any longer,” he stated, “however who’ve refused placements, refused the connections now we have tried diligently to make for them for outpatient care, and they’re again on the market in a manner that it’s going to not shock me if we see them once more.”
He stated subway riders “are proper to be involved, and it is vitally disturbing to see any person in psychiatric disaster on a prepare.” However he urged them to keep in mind that “this can be a system that has been uncared for for many years, and it’s not an instantaneous turnaround.”
Philip Yanos, a psychology professor at John Jay Faculty of Legal Justice, stated on Tuesday that approaches to untreated psychological sickness that contain coercion and police involvement have been doomed to fail. “Why would an individual with a gun make you wish to have interaction?” he stated.
Mr. Volz’s ex-wife, Anna Torres, stated in a telephone interview that his demise “looks like such a waste.” She added: “That is loopy, as a result of he survived the pandemic, survived being homeless. He received higher, he received clear and the whole lot was working.”
As for Mr. McPherson, his mom, Octavia Scouras, stated on the telephone that she “did the whole lot potential so this youngster would have a greater life.” She stated he had been raised by his paternal grandmother from a younger age and was hospitalized for psychological sickness in his teenagers, however had continued to battle. “The entire scenario is extraordinarily unhappy,” she wrote in a textual content message.
His brushes with the regulation return to his adolescence, too. The Bronx district legal professional’s workplace stated {that a} Carlton McPherson with the identical delivery date and tackle, whom the workplace believed to be the identical particular person, was charged at age 16 with assaulting one other teenager after punching him within the face with brass knuckles and fracturing his nostril.
At his grandmother’s condo constructing on Sedgwick Avenue within the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx, a person who lived on the identical ground, Marco Paredes, stated he had watched Mr. McPherson deteriorate dramatically after his grandfather died a few years in the past.
“The grandfather was just like the authority determine, so when he died, he form of went off and his grandma couldn’t management him,” Mr. Paredes, 46, stated.
He stated Mr. McPherson broke home windows within the foyer and had broken the web wiring within the constructing as a result of he was pissed off that his grandmother wouldn’t let him into her house. He would tempo the hallway speaking to himself, Mr. Paredes added. “One time I caught him on the roof, simply strolling round in a sq..”
Claire Fahy, Hurubie Meko and Liset Cruz contributed reporting.