Straphangers speak out a month after fatal subway shoving (New York: school, university)

[Aeran]

I've seen people stand back and not go anywhere near the edge of the platform. Mostly everyone (including me) is either pressed against the wall or close to it if you're on a single track platform. If there are tracks on either side of the platform, I try to stand in the middle, sit on a bench or lean against some kind of wall. I try not to look down on my phone because without knowing, I can get too caught up by it and not be as watchful as I would like to be. And if I have earphones on, I set the volume to low.

https://gothamist.com/news/straphang...ontent=2022214

A pink stun gun sits buried in 20-year-old Britney Low’s purse. (Is it legal to carry those?).

Katja Vehlow, 51, avoids the edges of the subway platform. She sticks to the center until her train arrives.

But 44-year-old Danyelle Terry isn’t worried.

“I’m not afraid,” Terry told Gothamist. “Do I look afraid? Because I’m not.”

Some are going to work or school. Others are visiting friends. One thing they have in common: They all caught a train from the Times Square-42nd Street subway station on a recent afternoon, from the same platform where 40-year-old Michelle Go died a few weeks earlier after being pushed into the path of an oncoming train.

Subway shovings like the one that killed Go are rare. But the incidents can trigger a cascade of grief from New Yorkers, promises from elected officials and fear from commuters. Some riders change their behavior, like Low and Vehlow. Others, like Terry, carry on, if a bit more watchfully. The responses are as varied as New Yorkers themselves, reflecting their identities, biases, past experiences with violence and trust in their fellow commuters.

“There's no one size fits all response to tragedy,” said Dr. Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychology professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Any implication that there is one right way and one wrong way does not fit the data.”