"People watch from the safety of your phone"
Does SubwayCreatures cross an ethical line on social media? Where do we draw the line between policing social media guidelines and pure censorship? And are social media platforms responsible the content they host? Check out an interesting discussion about these topics and more in this episode of Decrypted.
So somehow a rat activates an iPhone camera and takes a selfie on an unsuspecting, sleeping man in the subway. Do we believe it? Probably not because Jimmy Kimmel has ruined everything for us.
Here are a few pictures of yesterday’s ‘No Pants Subway Ride’ courtesy of Gothamist. Ironically, each year it never seems to be the people you want to see in their underwear on the subway. Some of these images I can’t unsee. And this below I definitely can’t unsee!
DailyMail: An expat slapped by a monk on a train in Thailand wants to put the incident behind him, saying he is ‘sabai’ (fine) about it, after video of the bizarre assault went viral. The video shows the English teacher being struck across the face by the Buddhist monk after an apparent misunderstanding over seats. The man, wearing a pink shirt and three quarter-length shorts, appears to speak with an Australian accent, claiming he was hit ‘three times’ by the monk. A police officer soon arrived and removed the monk from the carriage to end the incident, which took place on December 7 on a train traveling from Bangkok to Phitsanulok, according to the Bangkok Post. ‘Jeff’, as he was later named in a video statement posted to Facebook by his neighbor Noojeab Kuntao, said he was ‘sabai, sabai’ meaning he was fine. ‘To me sabai, sabi,’ he says. ‘Thailand is Thailand, I love living in Thailand.” I love Thailand very much. Many people supported me over the Internet. I appreciate it. Everything is OK,” said Jeff, who was described as a tourist in local reports. It later emerged that Jeff was attempting to solve a delicate situation on the train by offering his double seat to two women and sitting next to the monk himself. The Facebook user who posted the video on the internet, Pui Pupriew, wrote that after the monk took exception to his sitting down, Jeff said ‘Fine, fine’ in a bid to diffuse the situation. However, it seems the monk misinterpreted the words as ‘kwai, kwai’, a deeply offensive term in Thai slang meaning buffalo. ‘I gave the seats to the ladies, I sat next to the Thai monk, he wasn’t happy and I got slapped,’ Jeff says in his explanation. ‘Sabai, sabai, enough.’
And that’s why I don’t pretend to know other languages. One minute you’re trying to be nice by offering up your seat and the next you’re getting slapped by the most peaceful people on the planet because you fucked up and called him a buffalo. If I were this guy I would really spice his story up at the next poker night because getting slapped over that and taking it like a bitch is a great way to lose friends.
Gothamist: An emotionally disturbed homeless person was taken into custody by police yesterday after he allegedly threatened to push people onto the subway tracks. The incident happened around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the 6 train platform at the 110th Street Station near Lexington Avenue. Cops say the man made statements to a 22-year-old woman “threatening to throw her onto the tracks.” According to the Post, the man threatened several other people and “appeared to want to make good on his threats by actually lunging toward several people.” The man, who has not been identified by cops, was taken into custody soon after. No one was injured in the incident, and the homeless man was brought to Mount Sinai Hospital for a psych evaluation; no charges have been filed.
See, this is the scariest kind of stuff about using the subway. This guy has nothing to lose in life and is clearly insane. This happened a couple years back when a crazy woman threw a guy in front of a train. Hopefully this guy will be locked up in a psych ward forever!
Gothamist: After an extensive manhunt, police apprehended the suspect in Sunday’s fatal subway shoving. Kevin Darden, 34, was caught yesterday near his mother’s house in the Bronx. And investigators believe he had also pushed a passenger in another violent incident earlier this month. The authorities believe that Darden is the man who threw Wai Kuen Kwok into an oncoming D train at the 167th Street station in the Bronx on Sunday morning. Kwok, 61, had been waiting for the southbound train with his wife so they could buy groceries and have lunch to celebrate her birthday in Chinatown. The train’s operator James Muriel said, “I see a body flying across the tracks. I knew that it wasn’t an ordinary jump on the tracks. The guy didn’t go straight down, he was actually in the air. I slammed the brakes when he was in the air. By the time I got to him he had just fallen onto the tracks, there was just nothing you can do. I need 300-400 feet to get a train to stop. It’s a 100-ton train.” Kwok was pronounced dead at the scene and Muriel added that Kwok’s wife cried in his arms. Surveillance video after the shoving showed Darden taking a Bx35 bus and getting off to go to a bodega, where he bought a loosie cigarette and smoked outside. A man who was pushed at the West 4th Street subway station saw the video and recognized him as his attacker. According to the Post, the West 4th Street victim is Asian like Kwok:
Darden… assaulted the first man because he dared to walk in front of him, the sources said. “I’m warning you!’’ Darden, 34, barked at the victim after shoving him to the ground at the West 4th Street station at around 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, the man told cops.Darden, who has more than 30 prior arrests, pushed him so hard that he suffered bruises to his hands and back and needed treatment at NYU Medical Center.
The victim, 51, came forward Tuesday after seeing a surveillance photo of Darden that cops released following the fatal shove of Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, in The Bronx Sunday, sources said. He told police he could pick Darden out of a lineup, which helped them get a warrant for his arrest, the sources said.
The Daily News adds, “A second victim also identified Darden as the man who robbed him inside a nearby Bronx subway station just 30 minutes before Kwok’s underground death.” Darden has been arrested dozens of times. In Texas, he was arrested in 2011 for trying to burn down his brother’s house and, on November 9th, he was arrested for trying to steal a tourist’s wallet outside the Times Square McDonald’s. The Post notes, “At his arraignment then, bail was set at $1,000, an amount the homeless man had no chance of posting. But after five days in jail, Darden appeared for a court hearing — where the supporting deposition wasn’t filed because the complaining witness left the country and couldn’t be reached, according to sources. The judge said he had no choice but to let Darden go without bail.” Darden’s mother Joyce Jones said he was mentally ill, “I’m glad they got him off the streets and I’m glad he’s not dead. I feel so, so sorry for those people and what happened. I know that won’t bring him back, but I am so, so sorry.”
HuffPost: A man standing with his wife on a Bronx subway platform was pushed onto the tracks Sunday morning by another man and was struck and killed by an oncoming train, police said. The assailant fled. Police said an unidentified man pushed 61-year-old Wai Kuen Kwok of the Bronx off the platform at the Grand Concourse and East 167th Street station in the Highbridge neighborhood, an act that appeared to be unprovoked. Kwok was struck by a southbound D train at around 8:40 a.m. and pronounced dead at the scene; his death was classified a homicide. His wife was not injured. There was no indication that Kwok knew the man or had had an altercation with him before he was pushed, police said. Witnesses told police they believed the man fled the subway station after shoving Kwok and jumped on a city bus. Police later released video surveillance showing a man wearing a dark jacket getting off a city bus and walking into a store. The man emerges moments later smoking a cigarette and strolls away. Police said the man was wanted for questioning in connection with Kwok’s death. The victim’s son, Gary Kwok, 29, a doctoral student at Adelphi University, told The New York Times that his father was a “fine, regular family man.” There have been three other incidents in recent years that involved a person being pushed onto the tracks. In April 2013, a train ran over a man desperately clawing at a Manhattan subway platform after being pushed onto the tracks by a homeless suspect with whom he’d been arguing. In December 2012, another homeless man was arrested for pushing a Queens straphanger in front of a Times Square train that fatally crushed him. And later the same month, a mumbling woman pushed a man to his death in front of a subway train in Queens.
This is the shit that always scares me as a NYC commuter. You never know where and when it’s going to happen and who is going to do it. The only thing you can really do is not stand near the edge of the platform and keep an eye out for suspicious people (who, in my head, is basically everyone). Very unfortunate situation and hopefully this guy is caught soon before it happens again!
Gawker: If you’re a regular commuter or tourist in New York City, here’s some exciting news: Earlier this week, MTA officials discovered that three N trains were infested with bedbugs. The New York Daily News reports that two of the trains were taken out of service while a third was sent for fumigation. “When we found them, we exterminated them,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Adam Lisberg told the Daily News. At least some of the bugs were found in the cabs used by the trains’ motorman and conductors; it’s not clear if any were discovered in the passenger area.
Theyyyyyyy’re baaaaaack! Let’s be honest, they never went anywhere but it’s been a while since the last big outbreak of bedbugs in NYC. Let’s just put this on our list of things this great summer has brought us like sweltering heat, sky rocketing rent, and possible Ebola. What was it Frank Sinatra said? If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere? Yes, I’m starting to think that is very true!
FOX59: Two women narrowly escaped death after facing down a train earlier this month. On July 10, the women were walking on the railroad tracks on the Shuffle Creek Trestle, a bridge over Lake Lemon about ten miles northeast of Bloomington, when they noticed a train was coming toward them. The engineer of the lead locomotive spotted them as the train came around a curve at 30 mph. The bridge is about 500 feet long and 80 feet high, and the women had nowhere to go. Video from the locomotive shows them trying to run away when they see the train. It’s clear that they won’t be able to make it to safety, and they can’t jump off the side because it’s too high. Meantime, the train horn goes off repeatedly. One woman lies down on the tracks; the other soon follows suit. By the time the train is able to stop, the cars have already passed the point where the women had taken refuge. The engineer assumed the two women had died and contacted the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department to report what happened. The women escaped serious injury. They ran to a nearby car and drove away after their brush with death. They have been identified by law enforcement, and the case is now a criminal matter.
I’d say lying down under a speeding train and coming out with a stubbed toe is definitely something you chalk up in the win column–especially when you have literally seconds to make a decision. How can you not think of Stand By Me when you see a close call like this? As always, I hope they bought a lottery ticket right after this and think twice next time about crossing a train bridge.
Wildlife aside, lakes gross me out in the first place. Between the shit you find at the bottom mixed with the murky, shitty water you just never know what you’re going to come across. Now I guess we can add 20 foot snakes that have the potential to eat your children to that list. I’ve seen all the ‘Anaconda’ movies and I know how this plays out. If I’m a Lake Hopatcong resident I’m going on an extensive vacation til this thing is killed by J-Lo and Ice Cube.
SubwayCreatures 