New York City’s subway system has become a rolling headline machine for all the wrong reasons—and the latest case reads like a grim indictment of a city that too often mistakes restraint for wisdom.
A 23-year-old woman, speaking anonymously to the New York Post, says she and a friend barely escaped a violent encounter with 32-year-old Rhamell Burke on April 2. Burke, who has a history of recent arrests, allegedly attacked the pair aboard a subway car before stalking them as they tried to get away.
But what makes this story explode beyond a single incident is what happened next—or rather, what didn’t.
The woman admitted she declined to press charges at the time, telling the Post: “Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”
That decision, made in the moment after a frightening encounter, is now weighing heavily on her conscience. Weeks later, Burke is accused of a far more brutal act: the fatal shoving of 76-year-old retired teacher Ross Falzone down a flight of subway stairs.
According to police, Falzone was attacked on Thursday night at the 18th Street station after Burke allegedly followed him for some distance before suddenly rushing forward and pushing him onto the stairs. The retired educator suffered catastrophic injuries—including a traumatic brain injury, fractured spine, and broken rib—and died hours later at Bellevue Hospital.
Yes, the same Bellevue Hospital Burke had reportedly been released from just hours before the deadly encounter.
City officials say Burke was taken there earlier in the day after behaving erratically outside a Manhattan NYPD precinct, where officers encountered him armed with a stick pulled from trash. He was transported as an emotionally disturbed person, evaluated, and released in roughly an hour. Five hours later, Falzone was dead.
And surveillance footage, investigators say, shows Burke trailing the elderly man before the sudden attack.
Burke was later tracked down at Penn Station and taken into custody after detectives recognized him from surveillance images. He was allegedly still wearing a hospital psychiatric bracelet at the time of the assault.
What makes this case particularly explosive is Burke’s recent history: multiple arrests in just months—including assaulting a police officer, burglary, resisting arrest, and another assault earlier in April. Yet, like so many repeat offenders cycling through New York’s criminal justice system, he had previously been released under supervised conditions.
For many New Yorkers, this is the part that feels painfully familiar: arrest, release, repeat.
The young woman who narrowly escaped him in April now says she regrets not involving prosecutors after her encounter. At the time, she and her friend had fled between subway cars after Burke allegedly kicked her companion and grabbed her by the head during the pursuit.
“We started running a little bit,” she recalled, “but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives.”
Burke was arrested immediately after that earlier incident—but, as so often happens in the city’s revolving-door system, the consequences apparently didn’t hold.
Now a retired teacher is dead, a suspect with a long record is in custody, and a young woman is left wondering what might have changed if she had pressed charges when she had the chance. It’s a grim equation New Yorkers know too well.
