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The attack
occurred on a Manhattan-bound "F" train from Queens a week
earlier, when a 45-year-old woman asked the suspect to remove
her belongings from a seat so she could sit, said Lieutenant
Thomas Antonetti, spokesman for the New York Police Department.
When the rider did not respond, the woman attempted to sit down
anyway.
"The suspect became enraged pushing the victim, scratching her
on the chest, pulling her hair and biting her on her forearm
causing a laceration and bleeding," the NYPD said in a
statement.
The suspect fled the train when it stopped at a station but not
before the victim snapped a cellphone picture of her baring her
teeth, which police shared with the public to help track down
the suspect.
"Caught in the act," Antonetti said.
The rider was taken to the hospital but has since been released.
In December, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which
operates the city's subways, launched "Courtesy Counts, Manners
Make a Better Ride," a campaign that urges customers extend
kindnesses such as removing packages from seats and refraining
from hogging space by sitting with their legs wide apart, known
to New Yorkers as "manspreading."
The campaign includes posters aimed at shaming people who
exhibit such discourteous behavior as clipping their nails
onboard, using straphanger poles for acrobatic acts and standing
by doors blocking the flow of riders in the mostly underground
transit system.
"That should be standard operating procedure for human beings,"
Antonetti said.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Bill Trott)
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