A Marine Corps veteran who was stabbed while protecting a lady on a New York City subway is now urging city officials to get way more serious about crime.
Veteran Alfredo Troche, 53, told the New York Post that his military training compelled him to intervene on Thursday when he spotted two men threatening an elderly woman with a box cutter at a subway station in Allerton, a Bronx neighborhood.
“I was coming up the steps on Pelham Parkway and I see a lady screaming. It could be my grandmother,” he said.
“I see two shadows. I see a box cutter, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I get the adrenaline, Marine Corps.’ They were going to assault the lady. It could have been my grandmother. It could have been you. It could have been him, your mother. She was screaming,” he added.
Troche then jumped into action like a “martial artist,” reportedly “pinching, kicking, kicking the teeth” out of the perps.
He wound up sustaining stab wounds to his hand, his inner elbow, and his leg. After the fight, he called the police.
“They didn’t come, so I kept on going and I fell down in the Bronx Zoo, [and] at a bus stop I called the ambulance,” he recalled.
He was subsequently transported to Montefiore Medical Center, where he stayed for eight hours.
As for the woman he saved, she later reached out to him to thank him.
“Thank you for your service,” she reportedly said.
The incident occurred a day after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul began deploying National Guard soldiers and State Police officers to patrol New York City’s subways and, more importantly, check riders’ bags.
Gov Hochul deploys Nat’l Guard, more police to subways amid crime surge, transit authorities say it’s not enough https://t.co/2MX4lQvkjz via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) March 7, 2024
Troche was pleased by the move but demanded more.
“All five boroughs, not only Manhattan. Everywhere. You need to deploy not only in Times Square, [but] all five boroughs,” he said.
Otherwise, he warned, vigilantes will have to “come out” and deal with the ongoing crime just like he did.
“The point is they need to deploy,” he added. “Tell the mayor to deploy. The governor too. If not, the vigilantes will come out. If they don’t do nothing, we’re going to do something. I’m tired. We’re on the street, we’re going to work, going to school…when is it going to stop?”
“The point is, we have to protect our society,” he added.
Troche has been living in the Bronx for six years now. In his opinion, crime is worse there than it used to be. Why? Because of the state bail reform laws passed in 2020 amid the violent Black Lives Matter riots.
“It’s never been like this. You tell the DA, if you get locked up for a violent crime, no bail,” he said.
The new policy put in place by Hochul specifically states that subway riders must consent to a bag check or be denied access to the subway.
“Go home,” she bluntly answered when asked on Thursday by local station WNYW for her response to subway riders who refuse to be stopped and checked. “We’re not going to search you—you can say no. But you’re not taking the subway.”
“My number one priority is the safety of all New Yorkers. If people are anxious in any aspect of their lives, particularly the lifeblood of our region—downstate does not function without a healthy subway system that people have confidence in—I have to do this for them,” she added.
Gov Hochul gives blunt 2-word answer for those upset about new stop-and-check subway policy https://t.co/1lJpqEOhKy via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) March 8, 2024
Hochul went on to claim the stop-and-check policy is different from stop-and-frisk, a former policy that was criticized for disproportionately targeting black people.
“‘There’s no search-and-frisk, there’s no stop-and-frisk, there’s no profiling. All this is a deterrent saying: ‘You want to commit a crime? Go somewhere else—not on our subways,’” she said.
“You want to look in the eyes of the police officer or the MTA transit police or National Guard and still jump the—skip the fare? Go ahead,” she unapologetically added.
The governor further said she hopes that the entire New York City subway system will one day be covered in surveillance cameras.
“I’d rather be in the business of preventing crimes than having to solve them,’ she said. “‘And if people know they’re being watched—that there’s a camera that will record if they harm someone, assault, bring out a gun, have a knife, that they’re going to get caught—I think that’s going to have a powerful effect on the psychology of the criminals.”
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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