Man arrested after he pulls gun, fires 2 shots trying to prevent purse snatching on NYC subway

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who pulled out a pistol and fired two shots on a New York City subway platform in an apparent attempt to stop someone from stealing a woman’s purse faces criminal charges that he endangered people in the station and possessed the gun illegally.

No one was struck by the gunshots Tuesday inside the station, located a few blocks north of Times Square.

Authorities said John Rote, 43, intervened when a man who had been asking riders for money near the turnstiles at around 9 p.m. tried to grab a 40-year-old woman’s purse.

Security camera video captured some of what happened next. The recording, published in the New York Post shows a man in shorts and a green T-shirt standing on a train platform. The man rummages in his backpack, pulls out a handgun, fires one shot, lowers the gun, then raises it and fires a second shot.

“I’ve looked at the video,” New York City Transit President Richard Davey said at a news conference Wednesday. “It’s, I would say unusual. He sort of looks very calm, pulls out a gun, fires two shots, calmly puts the gun back in the bag and walks away.”

“The point is, that’s not what we need from anybody in this system,” he said.

Rote walked away after the shooting but was arrested Wednesday on charges including reckless endangerment, menacing and illegal weapon possession, authorities said.

“Thank goodness nobody was hurt here — but what happened was outrageous, reckless, and unacceptable,” Davey said in a statement released after Rote was arrested.

Police also arrested Matthew Roesch, 49, Tuesday night on a charge of attempted robbery.

Authorities said Roesh was holding an emergency gate open to let riders avoid paying the fare and then asking for money in return.

When the 40-year-old woman declined to pay him, “it looks like he attempted to steal her purse,” Davey said.

Both Rote and Roesch were awaiting arraignment Thursday morning, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said. It wasn’t clear when they would get attorneys who could speak for them.

Although the New York City subway system has been plagued by problems including fare evasion and aggressive panhandling, it is rare for riders to take law enforcement into their own hands.

Rote’s arrest recalled the death earlier this year of Jordan Neely, a onetime Michael Jackson impersonator who was placed in a fatal chokehold after witnesses said he was begging for money and acting in a threatening manner aboard a subway train.

U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny has pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s May 1 death.

In New York’s most infamous example of vigilante subway violence, Bernhard Goetz shot four young Black men on a subway train in 1984 after one of them asked him for $5. Goetz, who is white, said he thought he was being robbed. A jury acquitted him of attempted murder but convicted him of carrying an unlicensed handgun.