Bronx subway stabbing victim: 'There was blood gushing out'
VAN NEST, Bronx (WABC) -- A pregnant woman stabbed in the neck during a confrontation on a subway train in the Bronx is speaking out about the horrific experience from her hospital bed.
Shaday Tripp, 23, and her friend were riding a northbound number 2 train in the Van Nest section around 6:40 p.m. Thursday when her leg accidentally brushed up against the man sitting next to her, which sparked the potentially deadly encounter. The friend, 21-year-old Zakia Lewis, was also stabbed, and the suspect, 50-year-old Derrick Wilson, is under arrest and facing charges.
Tripp, who is four or five months pregnant and homeless, was on her way to pick up her belongings from a shelter following a doctor's appointment.
"We got on the train, and she sat down, and she said sit on my lap because the train was crowded and I didn't have anywhere else to sit," she said. "And then some guy, he was sitting next to us, and then when the train started moving, my leg bumped his leg."
She said the man confronted her, and she apologized. But when it happened again, the man was not as polite.
"He got angry and was like, 'Yo, you (expletive) touched me with your leg, I don't want to be touched,'" she said. "After that, he started cursing, and then my best friend said, 'What is your problem?' And after she said that, he got up, he got angry, and then he pulled the knife out of his pocket and he just stabbed me in my neck. And then after he stabbed me, he stabbed my friend."
Police say Wilson ran from the train at the Prospect Avenue station, throwing the knife from the elevated platform to the roof of a nearby building, police said. Good Samaritans chased him and then held him until police arrived.
"I ran through the train doors and was holding my neck, and there was blood gushing out," Tripp said. "The people on the train, they kept asking me what happened, what happened...and I'm like, 'call an ambulance, call an ambulance.'"
Lewis was stabbed in her arm, and her mother spoke exclusively to Eyewitness News.
"When she called me, she said, 'Mom, I got stabbed,'" said the mother, who didn't want to be identified. "She worried about her best friend, that's the main thing that happened. She's home, she says she's OK."
She said Tripp is like a daughter to her.
"She don't got nowhere to go," she said. "Nobody try to help her."
Tripp is listed in stable condition, while Lewis was treated and released.
"It's too much," Tripp's mom, Sheniqua Marcus said tearfully outside Lincoln Medical Center. "She said she bled so much, she didn't know what to do. She thought she was going to die."
Wilson is charged with attempted murder, assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon. He has 15 prior arrests.
Watch Wilson escorted by police Friday morning:
Bail was set for Wilson at $200,000.
His public defender said that Wilson does not have a mental illness and said that Wilson may have feared for his own safety.
