Exclusive: Great-grandfather speaks out after being pushed onto subway tracks
UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) -- Trevor Crawford tells Eyewitness News that even doing something as simple as sitting up is extremely difficult. He has several broken ribs and is still in a lot of pain after Derrick Mills allegedly shoved the 74-year-old great-grandfather onto the subway tracks.
"I'm coming from work, I don't trouble nobody. I have my phone in my pocket, playing my music, walking, going home," Crawford said.
Crawford had just wrapped up a 12-hour shift at work early Tuesday morning and he was heading home to Brooklyn. The father of three from Jamaica was inside the station at 68th and Lexington Ave. when he crossed paths with the suspect, who police say was initially talking to himself.
"I heard a voice say 'didn't I tell you not to say anything to me?'" said Crawford.
Crawford did not think the suspect was talking to him, so he kept walking - his attacker followed.
"He came around the column and he looked at me and he said 'don't you hear? I say you're not saying anything to me,' so I turned and said 'look I don't know you, leave me alone," said Crawford.
However, the suspect would not leave him alone.
"He opened his eyes wide. He runs, two pushes. He used two hands - boom, like a cannonball lifted me up, lift me up, lift me up off the platform. I dropped between the subway lines," said Crawford.
Crawford says he was conscious the entire time he was laying on the tracks and that gauging from the signs on the platform, a train would be barreling into that station in about seven minutes.
"I saw a couple of transit workers, and I said help," Crawford adds.
The transit workers then pulled him onto the platform.
Mils took off, but was arrested two days later.
Crawford says now he wants justice.
"People like this, the transit system is supposed to be more careful of and the government is supposed to be taking care of those people not to let them out on the street to disturb other people's lives," he said.
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