Woman Thrown in Front of Train at Times Square Subway Station was killed

A 46-year-old Queens woman was killed after being pushed in front of a subway train in Times Square on Monday, the New York Police Department said. The attack disrupted traffic at one of the city’s busiest transit hubs as trains were diverted and emergency workers converged on the scene.

Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said witnesses on both the subway platform and the train itself flagged down police officers and pointed out a suspect.

A 30-year-old woman was taken into custody almost immediately, as suspect. The police said they were investigating whether the woman, who was described as emotionally disturbed, was involved in a similar attack last month. Neither woman was identified by the authorities.

The police were combing through video from the platform and the area to better understand what happened, but the preliminary investigation suggested that the attack was unprovoked.

The attack occurred at 1:20 p.m., when a woman was pushed in front of a No. 1 train. Swarms of police officers and emergency workers converged on the station, and subway traffic was rerouted as emergency crews worked to remove the body, which was pinned under the third car of the train.“It is a horrific incident,” Chief Aubry said.

The Times Square-42nd Street station is the busiest on the subway system, with 66 million annual riders. It serves 10 subway lines and the shuttle to Grand Central Station. More than 200,000 people navigate the tunnels there every day.

Cases involving people being pushed in front of subway trains are exceedingly rare, but when they occur, they strike at some of the deepest fears held by city dwellers.

In 2012, when Ki-Suck Han of Queens was struck and killed by a train in Manhattan, The New York Post published a front-page photograph of him on the tracks moments before his death.

Less than a month later, when another person was pushed in front of a train in an unprovoked attack, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought to reassure jittery riders.

“You can say it’s only two out of the three or four million people who ride the subway every day, but two is two too many,” Mr. Bloomberg said then. “I don’t know that there is a way to prevent things. There is always going to be somebody, a deranged person.”

In 1999, two attacks involving mentally ill people pushing unsuspecting victims into the path of trains, one fatally, led to legislation giving families the right to demand court-ordered outpatient psychiatric treatment for their ill relatives.

Known as Kendra’s Law, it permits state judges to order closely monitored outpatient treatment for people with serious mental illnesses who have records of failing to take medication, and who have frequently been hospitalized or jailed or have exhibited violent behavior.

The law was named for Kendra Webdale, who was pushed to her death by Andrew Goldstein. He had stopped taking the medication he had been prescribed for schizophrenia.