A Crown Heights man will spend seven years behind bars for slashing a straphanger’s face on the subway last year.
The defendant, Sean Lewis, was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday, nearly two months after he pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted assault.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, on the night of May 10, 2023, Lewis was fighting with another man on board a southbound C train when a third man, who was not involved in the spat, moved in to break it up.
Lewis turned toward to the 44-year-old Good Samaritan, who tried to retreat. As the train pulled into the Franklin Avenue station in Bed-Stuy, Lewis walked up to the victim, said “Thank you,” and slashed his face with a sharp object, leaving an eight-inch gash.
The victim fled into the station and later required about 100 stitches to close the wound on the left side of his face. Police identified Lewis on surveillance footage and arrested him the following week.
Lewis will be subject to five years of post-release supervision after his prison sentence is served.
“Today’s sentence holds the defendant accountable for a vicious and unprovoked attack of a stranger riding the subway,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “The fact that the victim was simply acting as a Good Samaritan makes the defendant’s behavior in this case especially appalling. We will never tolerate violence in the subway system.”
Citywide, crime in the subway system was down slightly in 2023, according to the NYPD, and continued to trend downward in the first half of 2024, despite a spike in violent incidents at the start of the year that led Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy the National Guard to help patrol the system.
In January, 45-year-old Richard Henderson was shot and killed on a 3 train at the Franklin Avenue station after he attempted to break up a fight between two commuters. The next month, MTA workers temporarily halted work, seeking assurances of safety, after a conductor was slashed in the neck on an A train at Rockaway Avenue. In March, a 36-year-old man was shot with his own gun during a fight onboard an A train at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets — an incident police later blamed on fare evasion.
Police have said the decrease in subway crime is due in part to extra police patrolling the system, and that the NYPD has arrested hundreds of people for carrying weapons into the system this year. The city is set to pilot AI metal detectors in subways this summer to further reduce weapons in the subway.
