A suspect has been arrested in New York City in connection with the fatal stabbing death of a 36-year-old passenger who yelled that he was "going to erase someone" on a northbound J train Tuesday night.
Devictor Ouedraogo, 36, was killed after he began arguing with 20-year-old Jordan Williams and his girlfriend on the train, police and sources told the New York Post.
Rumble video
Loading this lets Rumble set cookies and collect data.
A witness, who identified himself only as Eric, told the outlet that Ouedraogo and another person had started "acting obnoxious" after they boarded the J train at either the Fulton or Chambers Street station.
“He was getting in the face of somebody on the other end of the train. At one point he took his shirt off and I heard him say he was going to erase someone” Eric said of Ouedraogo.
Eric, 28, noted that Ouedraogo "didn’t seem drunk" and appeared coherent during the fight and actions that lead up to it.
Williams boarded the train near The Bowery and sat down beside a young woman near the end of the train.
Eric said that around Delancey Street, Ouedraogo said something to one of the women sitting across from Williams, to which Williams rolled his eyes and one of the women said to Ouedraogo “something to the effect of you mind you business or you stay out of it."
Williams quietly told Ouedraogo something that sounded like "you need to chill or you need to relax," Eric said, adding that after around three or four more exchanges, Ouedraogo "cracked him [Williams] in the face," with other sources stating that Ouedraogo also hit Williams’ girlfriend.
As Williams and Ouedraogo wrestled on the ground, Eric said passengers fled to neighboring cars, one of which was "packed like a sardine can."
Watching from another train car, Eric said he "didn’t see him [Williams] pull out a knife but it looked like he punched him [Ouedraogo] in the chest."
He said Ourdraogo “walked through the car doors into the car where everyone was and I backed up and he had a hole in the center of his chest and it was pumping blood and he had a glossed over look in his eyes.”
Ouedraogo collapsed at the Marcy Avenue platform and was pronounced dead at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.
Sources told the outlet that Williams and his girlfriend were taken in by police at the Chauncey Street Station. Williams has been charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. The woman was later released from custody.
Ouedraogo previously served three and a half years in prison for an attempted robbery in Queens, and was paroled to immigration in April of 2012.
The incident comes as Marine veteran Daniel Penny has been indicted by a grand jury after the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man with more than 40 arrests, on a subway train car.