2 arrested after a fatal stabbing and 3 cuts in the subway

After a series of attacks on the subways over the weekend — including a fatal stabbing of a man during a fight and attacks on three women who had their legs slashed — police stepped up their presence in the system and arrested two men.

The incidents were unrelated, but they came at a time when riders remain fearful of crime on public transport. Over the weekend, police added 80 more officers to the city’s subways and platforms to reassure travelers, said Michael M. Kemper, the chief of transit police.

“That perception is real for so many,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to combat — this overwhelming uniformed presence in the subway system is what we’re doing to reduce that fear and that perception.”

In the first incident, 32-year-old Tavon Silver from the Bronx, who had survived a subway stabbing a year ago, was killed in a morning fight on the 4 train on Saturday. Claude White, 33, was arrested Monday and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the murder, police said.

On Sunday afternoon, three women were cut in the legs in two separate incidents, and on Tuesday, 28-year-old Kemal Rideout was arrested and charged with three counts of felony in the stabbings. The injuries were not life-threatening, according to police.

Both arrests were made by the same team of five plainclothes officers, who identified the men after comparing their faces to images captured by Metropolitan Transportation Authority cameras.

Mr White, who has a criminal record that includes a robbery conviction, was arrested at 10.40am, about 55 hours after he stabbed Mr Silver in the chest as the two men fought on train 4 heading south, police said.

The men knew each other and Mr. White said, “It was a narcotics dispute,” said James Essig, the chief of detectives.

Officers responding to an 911 call found Mr Silver semi-conscious and bleeding on the train at Union Square station at around 4am. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.

Mr White was arrested after going through the door of a subway station without paying, police said.

Mr. Silver was stabbed in the arm on the subway last June when he got into a fight with a man who called him a homophobic slur. That stabbing had nothing to do with Saturday’s murder, police said.

Mr Rideout was arrested at 9.45am on Tuesday when police spotted him exiting a bodega near East 122nd Street, police said. He was charged in incidents beginning at 4:20 p.m. Sunday, when a man holding a shard of glass, according to investigators, cut “deep wounds” into the legs of two women who were on or near the platform of the 86th Street and Lexington Avenue Station, the police said.

That attack, against a 19-year-old woman and a 48-year-old woman, took place “without any provocation,” Chief Kemper said.

The man then boarded the 4 southbound train, where minutes later he severed the legs of a 28-year-old woman who was on the train, Chief Kemper said. That attack was also random, he said.

Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chairman and chief executive, said while he was encouraged by the arrests and statistics indicating subway crime has stabilized, the attacks were “particularly unnerving”.

“And that is unacceptable,” he said. “Nobody should be afraid doing business in New York.”

Chief Kemper said arrests in the subway system are up 52 percent so far this year compared to last year, while crimes are down about 4 percent.

Police have added about 1,000 officers to the system since last October, when Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul announced the start of a security initiative.

There are “no immediate plans” to remove the 80 additional officers from the system, Chief Kemper said.