Posted on 11/22/2009 2:22:15 AM PST by tlb
A bugged-out exterminator went berserk ...fatally plunging a knife into a fellow straphanger's neck after they argued over a seat.
Cops rushed to the train and nabbed the alleged killer thanks to a quick-thinking train conductor, who locked the doors.
Jerry Sanchez, 37, got on the northbound train at Rockefeller Center about 2 a.m.
He confronted Dwight Johnson, demanding he move a bag from the seat where the attacker wanted to sit.
Johnson, believed to be homeless, refused and punched Sanchez in the face. Sanchez pulled out a steak knife and stabbed him several times in the neck and face.
One of the passengers notified the crew via intercom. The conductor locked down the car.
A police source said Sanchez tossed the knife on the tracks before cops boarded the train. The weapon was later recovered.
Cops found the mad bug man sitting down.
"'What? I didn't do nothing,'" a police source quoted him as saying. "Like nothing happened, like he's just another passenger."
MTA officials praised the train crew. "They did a really good job not letting him out of the car," a spokesman said.
Co-workers at Terminate Control, the Manhattan exterminator service where Sanchez works, said the boss sent him home Friday morning for showing up late.
"But he took it in stride," one co-worker said. "Jerry's not someone to hold a grudge."
The suspect's brother, Louis Sanchez, told The News his sibling hurt himself on the job two weeks ago when he fell two floors after a floor buckled under him.
"He was in pain because he fell," the brother said. "He was talking about headaches and backaches, and he was taking some kind of medication."
Friends and neighbors said Sanchez had been acting strangely since his accident. They said he'd been abusing painkillers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Exterminator?
One way to solve the homeless problem
I hope the other passengers sue the conductor's ass to Mars for locking them in with a guy with a knife who'd just murdered one passenger.
Really. I can imagine Paul Harvey saying, "And now for the rest of the story..."
Sounds like the derelict was taking up at least one seat with his hobo gear. I’m sure it was an infuriating moment for Mr. Sanchez, but I would have just gotten angry and said something mean instead of killing the man. I would maybe come up with something like “your breath stinks,” just to make him a little self conscious about it for the rest of the day.
But then I don’t go around carrying steak knives, so don’t listen to me.
My thought too. Makes you wonder who started what.
Unfortunately Sanchez who was hard-working and a taxpayer now will have to suffer for his vigilantism and the state will now have to pay to incarcerate him.
i ride the subway all the time and its become a real issue of people taking up multiple seats and ignoring others as the train fills up. courtesy is dead in nyc.
Why should he have to play musical chairs with seats? If there’s no one seated there, he had every right to sit there. Now why he was carrying a knife is another story, but since guns are outlawed and this is New York on the subway late at night, well you can figure it out.
Time to ban all steak knives.
False imprisonment... the conductor should be also brought up on charges.
The killer has so many excuse already going that I’m tempted to rename him Major Malik Abdul Sanchez
I didn't say he was stabbed because he was homeless--read in context. I said "stab a guy OVER A SEAT"--"it's OK" refers to "because he was homeless."
He just asked the guy to move his bag and the guy started punching him in the face, sounds like self-defense to me.
LOL Wow, that's real human compassion--you get into an argument with a guy with fists, and he pulls out a KNIFE and stabs the guy...to death. Over a seat.
Our (I say "our" because I am strongly pro-life) lectures about the sanctity of life simply fall away when someone punches us in the nose--then? KILL!!!!!!! LOL
Wow, he stabbed some homeless guy to death--what a macho man. Hey, at least he ended a life God created over something worthwhile, huh?
Also, sue the conductor? I've noticed a lot of freepers are for tort reform until someone does something they don't like then it is sue this, sue that.
"Sue this, sue that"? Are you insane? A guy just hacked a guy to death, and what does the official in charge of the scene do? LOCKS PEOPLE IN WITH THE GUY, who still has the weapon!
Man, it's always the armchair warriors who're so macho with other people's lives.
If your daughter or wife were locked into a train car with a guy who just butchered someone over a seat, I'm sure you'd be saying "Well, honey, he DID ask for the seat before he cut the guy up, now, you just have to sit politely and let him exercise his right to kill someone for punching him."
Some people need to engage the brain before they simply side with someone because it makes them feel all badass. If you ever had to deal with people like this regularly, I have a feeling you wouldn't be whipping out your knife and cutting a path through the evildoers of the world.
The reactions to this kind of story make me fear the people who supposedly have the same values as I do. In real life, these same people would be cowering in the corner from this knife-wielding killer. Here, it's all right with them to stab a guy to death over a thrown punch.
This story tells me more people need to take self-defense courses. The guy with the knife was a lot more of a threat than some drunken bum--obviously.
My brain goes after the "how do they do that" of the situation.
In this instance, I'm curious as to how one carries a steak knife without stabbing himself. None of my steak knives come with scabbards.
This is why the gun control nuts are so misinformed---criminals will always find a way to kill---the rest of us have to try to figure out ways to guard against them.
LOL
He has a rare eye disorder that makes homeless people look like juicy sirloin! He was depressed over hearing his next door neighbor talk about his post-traumatic distress disorder! Plus he was unemployed! Someone mentioned George W. Bush five minutes before! He was putting the knife away for safety and he fell on the victim several times! The train lurched! He was reaching for his token when the knife dropped from his pocket! Plus, he was worried about an AIDS test he was thinking of taking! You're anti-Muslim, and he was thinking about becoming a Muslim, maybe!
“i ride the subway all the time and its become a real issue of people taking up multiple seats and ignoring others as the train fills up. courtesy is dead in nyc.”
Maybe brains are dead in NYC.
It’s actually pretty common for all the seats to be full on a train at 2 a.m. depending on the night.
The trains only run every half hour at that time.
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