Union Square subway shover pleads guilty to attempted murder in NYC
A homeless man who shoved a woman onto Manhattan subway tracks as a train pulled into the station pleaded guilty to attempted murder for the unprovoked attack, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Friday.
Aditya Vemulapati will likely be sentenced to eight years in prison followed by five years of supervised release as part of the plea deal over the November 2020 attack, a DA spokesperson said in a statement.
Vemulapati, 26, was pacing on the Union Square No. 4/5/6 platform at about 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2020, before he randomly shoved 40-year-old Liliana Sagbaicela onto the tracks as a train pulled into the station.
Miraculously, Sagbaicela landed between the tracks and escaped with minor injuries after a number of train cars passed over her, police said at the time.
“She fell, fortunately for her, between the row bed and the rails,” then-Transit Chief Kathleen O’Reilly said after the attack. “Very minor injuries but for the grace of God.”
After the the attack, Sagbaicela told 1010 WINS she viewed footage of the shove – and understood how lucky she was to be alive.
“I saw in the video, the man — oh my, God, I can’t believe it,” Sagbaicela, a married mom of two daughters, told the radio station. “Is this happening? Now I understand why everybody and the police say to me, ‘You are alive for the miracles. You are a miracle.”
On Friday, District Attorney Alvin Bragg praised Vemulapati’s guilty plea.
“New Yorkers deserve to feel safe traveling on the subway. Aditya Vemulapati attempted to kill a stranger for no apparent reason, pushing her onto the subway tracks. Today, he is being held accountable for his actions,” Bragg said in a statement.
