MEET ERICA HERNANDEZ who threw a Man to his DEATH on the Subway Tracks Of The #7 Train!
A Muslim-hating madwoman confessed to pushing a hard-working Indian immigrant into a subway train's path - and her relatives tipped off police after seeing her on a Friday newscast.
Erica Menendez, a 31-year-old homeless woman who reportedly suffers from bi-polar disorder, admitted shoving Sunando Sen, 46, in front of a Queens 7 Train Thursday, telling police, 'I've hated Hindus and Muslims since 2001 since they put down the Twin Towers. I have been beating them up since.'
'She is accused of committing a subway commuter’s worst nightmare,' Queens District Attorney Richard Brown reportedly said on Saturday. '(He was) suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train, shoved from behind with no chance to defend himself.'
Authorities nabbed Menendez after her family tipped advised them Friday the homeless woman might be the one for whom they were searching in connection with the ghastly attack on Sen, sources told The New York Post. Relatives reportedly recognized Menendez's mug on a TV newscast.
It didn't take police long to catch up with her, as they spotted Menendez in Brooklyn's Crown Heights area about 5 a.m. Saturday. At the time, she wore the same jacket as she did in surveillance video retrieved from the 40th Street-Lowery subway station in Queen from which she fled after the 8pm attack.
Police reportedly tried in vain to question a muttering Menendez, who at one point inquired after the R train's location.
'All I know is that she's bipolar and as far as seeing the footage, I'm pretty sure it was her,' a cousin of the suspect told the Post.
The doorman at the Rego Park building where Menendez’s mother and stepfather live said she visited her folks regularly.
Menendez later confessed at the 112th Precinct House in Forest Hills, Queens that she did, indeed, push Sen, 46, a Calcutta native, into the 7 train's path.
The unidentified woman, seen fleeing on video, was reportedly muttering to herself
Authorities charged Menendez with murder as a hate crime, a second-degree offence carrying a penalty of 25 years to life in prison, according to authorities. As of Saturday evening, she awaited formal arraignment, and could not be reached for comment. It was unclear if she had an attorney.
The New York Daily News reported Sen had lived in the U.S. for the past 20 years and currently resided in a Queens apartment with at least two roommates. It was not clear if he was Muslim or Hindi.
'I think she's crazy,' Sen's shocked roommate, Ar Suman, told the New York Post. 'I can't believe this right now.' Suman said Sen, who was single and childless, had just opened a copy shop, the New Amsterdam Printing Co, with another man on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
'My heart is broken because this guy was so nice and quiet,' added Sen’s other roommate, Md Khan.
On Friday, Sen's business partner was trying to reach the victim's relatives in India to deliver them the bad news. A funeral service was scheduled for Sunday, Dec. 30, between 3pm and 5pm at Coppola-Migliore Funeral Home on 104th Street in Queens.
According to NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly,. officers identified Sen using his wallet and laptop, both of which were recovered at the scene.
The NYPD's chief spokesman Paul Browne said Menendez fled the station after the attack. Meanwhile, Kelly has said Sen was looking westbound as the train pulled into the station and likely didn't see the woman leaping from a bench and shoving him at the last, possible moment before the train arrived.
Sen was struck by the first car of an 11-car northbound train and got stuck under the wheels of the second car, Browne said.
The NYPD chief added Sen, who was pronounced dead at the scene, had 'terrible injuries that make providing a description difficult at this time.'
It also has not been determined if anyone tried to help the man up before he was struck by the train. However, according to witnesses, there wouldn't have been time.
'I heard the train screech as it was stopping and then heard this loud scream,' Linda Santini-Tripodis, who was beneath the 40th Street station at the time, told the newspaper. 'I'm never going to forget that scream for as long as I live.'
Sen's death marks a second time this month that someone has been killed in such a gruesome fashion.
However, Browne added there was 'no trend' of such horrific occurrences. 'It's the urban nightmare,' Browne told Bloomberg.
'It's sometimes in the back of peoples' minds because of the incident preceding this one, but there's no indication that it is related in any way or inspired it,' he added.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly said during his weekly radio address Friday he understood that the extraordinary nature of the tragedy did not diminish its impact upon the victims' families.
