Dr. C.G. Wang’s son is speaking out after the 90-year-old astrophysicist was shoved off a New York City subway train and left with multiple broken bones.
Juin Wang, the professor’s son, demanded answers about the unprovoked attack that hospitalized his father and required emergency hip replacement surgery. The assault occurred on Oct. 6 around 1 p.m. Aboard a southbound F-train as the elderly scholar tried to exit at the Lexington Avenue and East 53rd Street station, a stop he had navigated thousands of times before.
Wang, who is visually impaired and had been living independently, had politely asked a stranger to move so he could reach the door he knew would open directly in front of the escalator. “I said I need to exit … here. I just said it like that,” Wang told ABC 7 of the simple request. “And he stepped aside. The door opened. I was pushed so hard I flew out of the train.”
The professor recalled the violent sequence in stark detail. “I landed on my hip first. Then my shoulder, next. Then my head, next. Boom, boom, boom.” The fall broke several bones and left him in need of a hip replacement, a procedure he endured despite having never before been hospitalized in his nine decades of life.
NYPD investigators released a surveillance image on Wednesday, three weeks after the attack, showing a suspect believed to be between 40 and 50 years old with a medium build. The man was wearing a black jacket and black baseball cap when he fled the scene in an unknown direction following the assault.
“Who does this?” Juin Wang asked in an emotional appeal. “You know, who, who, who would shove a 90-year-old, frail, visually impaired man?”
Despite his advanced age, Wang had maintained an active academic life, regularly commuting to an office where he conducted research and wrote. The attack has now shattered that routine and left him recovering at NYU Langone Tisch Hospital, where EMS transported him in stable condition immediately after the incident.
The family is balancing concern for Wang’s recovery with a broader mission to prevent similar violence. Juin Wang said their primary focus remains his father’s healing, but they also want “to be sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else.” Police have appealed to the public for help identifying the suspect, who remains at large.
The train was reportedly fairly empty when Wang made his fateful request, making the stranger’s violent response all the more inexplicable to those now following the case.