Alexander Rakitin told the New York Post he’s been commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the subway for almost three decades — but in the last couple of years he’s noticed the danger factor increase.
“I think everyone who takes the subway feels scared and nervous,” Rakitin, a father who works in finance, told the Post. “There’s a degree of nervousness all the time. Scanning my surroundings, seeing irate, angry people. People just not following the rules, antisocial behavior, criminal behavior, and aggression.”
‘Everybody that gets on the subway in the morning knows they’re going down into a dangerous place. That’s just the reality we live in.’
Rakitin experienced all of that dialed up several notches earlier this week in a dangerous encounter captured on cellphone video.
Just after 8:30 a.m. Monday, Rakitin was aboard the N train when another passenger became upset, WABC-TV reported.
The Post noted that Rakitin, 42, accidentally nudged the knee of 34-year-old Timothy Barbee.
“He’s being aggressive that apparently I sat too close to him, even though I wasn’t in an adjacent seat,” Rakitin told the station. “It’s just he felt that’s his personal space, and he was being very aggressive. I told him to just chill out. Like, just chill. It’s 8:30 in the morning. Just going to work. Nobody needs this. Just chill out. And he just escalated.”
Video shows the pair jawing at each other with apparent expletives when Barbee tells Rakitin to “make me chill” and repeatedly orders him to “shut the f*** up.” Rakitin tells Barbee that “you started it,” and the pair stare each other down.
With that, Barbee tells Rakitin, “I ain’t got time to go to jail today” and to “stop staring at me” — and then slaps Rakitin in the face, causing Rakitin’s glasses to fly off his head.
Rakitin told WABC that while he’s had previous encounters on the subway, this was the first time it escalated into physical violence.
But Rakitin said he fought back.
“I got on top of him, and I just grabbed ahold of him,” he told the station. “And I was thinking, like, ‘Just don’t let go because he’s much bigger than me.’ I don’t know what’s on his mind, so I was just holding him until the cops came.”
Rakitin added to WABC that Barbee started calling out for help. What’s more, Rakitin told the Post that Barbee — and other passengers — actually began telling Ratikin to let Barbee go.
“The only way I can explain it to myself is that the people that saw it start, how it started, they just ran away,” Rakitin told the paper. “Most people just ran away into a different train car. And then the people that didn’t see it start only paid attention when I wrestled him to the ground.”
The Post said Barbee was arrested after the train pulled into the next stop; he was charged with third-degree assault. WABC said Rakitin wasn’t seriously hurt.
Barbee declined to comment on the incident after his Tuesday arraignment, the Post reported.
“Everybody that gets on the subway in the morning knows they’re going down into a dangerous place,” Rakitin told WABC. “That’s just the reality we live in.”
You can view WABC’s video report here about the incident. The Post’s video shows the argument, the slap — and then Barbee being led off the train in handcuffs.
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Fighting back, Self-defense, New york city, Subway, Manhattan, Physical attack, Arrest, Assault charge, Video, Slap, Argument, Crime
