NYC subway conductor Jean Joseph stuck his head out the train window to check that all passengers were safely aboard when a deranged stranger punched him in the face, breaking his teeth.
After the random attack on the W train last week at the Ditmars Boulevard Station in Astoria, he has not been back to work.
“He was mumbling something about me closing the doors,” said Joseph of his attacker, who wore a white undershirt.
The MTA employee, 33, who is originally from Haiti and about to become a new dad, speculates that the man was angry he missed the train.
He is still traumatized.
“I had a nightmare: I was sticking my head out the window, but it wasn’t a person who hit me. It was a train,” he told The Post.
When the unhinged assailant heard the conductor’s call for help come over the supervisor’s radio, he took off down the stairs and out of the station, Joseph said.
“I think it’s messed up,” Joseph said of the May 2 attack, noting another train conductor he works with was also recently struck. “We’re basically trying to do our job and something like that just happens.”
His fiancée immediately thought of a March 2024 incident in Brooklyn, in which a conductor was sliced in the neck while sticking his head out of the train car window.
“My baby mother keeps thinking about that other conductor who got slashed in the neck,” he said. “She’s also afraid for me.”
Joseph was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital for a cut lip and two cracked teeth.
He isn’t sure when he’ll return to work.
“I’m afraid to stick my head out the window now,” he said. “It’s part of our procedure. Sometimes people’s clothes or bag handles might get stuck in the doors, so we observe for their safety.”
Police released a wanted poster of the attacker, but there have been no arrests.
Assault in the city’s subway system rose 13%, to 208 so far this year from 184 in the same timeframe in 2024, according to police data. Major transit crime — including murder — remains down 7.8% from 709 to 654, cops said.
There have been 11 assaults on MTA employees so far this year, two fewer than the 13 at this point in 2024, according to NYPD data.
Assault on MTA employees hit a high of 22 in 2022, the data showed.
