Suspect under arrest in deadly New York City subway shooting

Andrew Abdullah, 25, was expected to face a murder charge in the death of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez. The Legal Aid Society, which is representing him, said it was just beginning to review evidence and urged the public not to make assumptions about the case.

“Mr. Abdullah deserves vigorous representation from his defense counsel, and that is what The Legal Aid Society will provide,” the organization said in a statement.

Enriquez was shot to death while heading to brunch Sunday morning, about six weeks after 10 people were shot and wounded in an attack on another subway train.

Enriquez’s sister Griselda Vile implored the city Tuesday to tackle crime more effectively.

“I’m pleading that this not happen to another New Yorker,” she told Fox News. “I don’t want my brother just to be a passing name in the media, a passing name in our normalcy post-pandemic.”

Chief of Detectives James Essig said witnesses told police the gunman paced the last car of a Q line train heading from Brooklyn to Manhattan, muttering to himself. The only words witnesses could make out: “No phones.”

Then he pulled out a gun and fired at Enriquez at close range, hitting him once in the chest, police said. The shooter fled after the train arrived at Manhattan’s Canal Street and ditched his gun by handing it to a stranger on the subway stairs, Essig said. Police eventually found the recipient and the gun, which had been reported stolen in Virginia in 2019.

Police asked for the public’s help in identifying the gunman, tweeting out surveillance photos of a burly man dressed in a hoodie on a hot day and, on Tuesday morning, Abdullah’s name and photo.

The Legal Aid Society said it had tried since Monday night to arrange for him to surrender in the subway shooting, but authorities instead made a “completely unwarranted and inappropriate” decision to apprehend him outside the organization’s office. An inquiry was sent to police.

Court records show Abdullah, 25, has two open criminal cases in New York City, one in Brooklyn stemming from an April 24 vehicle theft and the other for an alleged assault in Manhattan in 2020. Messages seeking comment were left with his lawyers.

“This horrific crime should never have happened,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news briefing Tuesday.

Enriquez worked for the global investment research division at Goldman Sachs, where CEO David Solomon called him a dedicated and beloved employee who “epitomized our culture of collaboration and excellence.”

A child of Mexican American parents, Enriquez spent his early childhood in Brooklyn before his family moved to California and then to Seattle, his partner, Adam Pollack, told the New York Post. Vile said both moves were prompted by violence in the family’s neighborhoods in New York and Southern California.

Enriquez returned to New York City in the mid-1990s to pursue a master’s degree in Latin American studies at New York University. His yen for learning didn’t stop there — during the coronavirus pandemic, he learned to play the guitar and to speak Portuguese and Italian, his family and partner said.

“He was constantly in self-improvement mode,” brother-in-law Glenn Vile told Fox News.

The eldest of five children, Enriquez looked out for his siblings and parents, his sister said. Just about an hour before he was killed, Enriquez texted his siblings to advise them to check on their parents, who have health problems, she said.

The seemingly random shooting further shook a city already on edge about public safety. Many types of crime have rebounded after dipping dramatically earlier in the pandemic when people were staying home. And concern about crime has soared.

In the first five months of 2022, the number of shootings in the city dropped slightly over the same period a year earlier, and the number of murders is down 12% so far over last year. But New York is still on pace to have its second-highest number of homicides since 2011, after nearly a decade of record lows.

In terms of violent crime, the city remains substantially safer now than it was during the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s.

Crime is now city voters’ top concern by far, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this month. It surveyed 1,249 registered city voters and has a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who campaigned on promises to make the city safer, said his administration will evaluate how it is deploying officers across the sprawling subway system.

There were no police officers on the train car where Enriquez was shot, Adams said.

Associated Press journalist Mary Altaffer contributed.