WASHINGTON – As he peered at the approaching metro train standing on the edge of platform on 40th and Lowery street station in Queens, Sunando Sen didn’t see or hear the footsteps of death behind his back, much less realize it was racist and hate-filled.
This was New York, the most racially and ethnically diverse city on the planet, where the immigrant from Kolkota had lived comfortably for nearly two decades and was on the threshold of entrepreneurial success.
Mumbling incoherently, Erika Menendez had stood up from a bench she was sitting on, walked up behind Sen, 46, and shoved him in the path of the oncoming train even as a few horrified witnesses saw the 8 pm incident, which was also captured in the station’s videocams in grainy footage. She then bolted from the station , causing a city-wide hunt.
She pushed Sen, the 32-year old Menendez later told police when she was apprehended following a tip-off after a public sighting, because she hates Hindus and Muslims , who in her view brought down the city’s World Trade Center twin towers on 9/11.
She was arrested on Saturday and charged with second degree murder.
Menendez is expected to be arraigned by Sunday morning . If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. By charging her with murder as a hate crime, the possible minimum sentence she faced would be extended to 20 years from 15 years, according to prosecutors.
The incident has stunned New York City, not the least because it is the second episode in a month of someone being shoved in the path of an oncoming train in a subway system that is more than 100 years old. Even in the troubled days after 9/11 such hate crimes were rare in NYC.
And ironically, the woman who harboured such racist sentiment and conflated Muslim and Hindu faith was herself Hispanic. Queens district attorney Richard Brown told the New York media that Menendez told the police she believed she had pushed a Muslim man off the platform “because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up”.
“Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions should never be tolerated by a civilized society,” Brown said, adding that he had no information on the defendant’s criminal or mental history and it will be up to the court to determine if she is fit to stand trial.
In an earlier incident on December 3, a Korean-American man died after he was shoved on to the path of an oncoming train in Queens by a homeless person, allegedly after an altercation. Deaths in New York subway is not unusual (there were 47 deaths in 2011), but they are mostly accidents and suicides, seldom homicides.
New Yorkers meanwhile mourned Sen, who came to city after enrolling at NYU in the early 1990s to study graphic design. He had only recently started a small printing business with financial backing from a college friend, and was working seven days a week to make it a success.
“I didn’t know anything about the business,” his friend and business partner Sanjeeb Das said about Sen, who was single. “He knew everything . We were close like brothers,” said Das, who shared a placed with Sen from 1998 to 2005 before moving out to get married. “Every weekend , he came to my house. He loved my small son.”
