A Bronx man who allegedly stabbed a straphanger at the East 176th Street subway station was arrested Saturday, a day after the victim died from his injuries, police said.
Saquan Lemons, 27, is accused of approaching Charles Moore as Moore exited a northbound 4 train at around 10:30 p.m. Thursday, and stabbing him several times in the back and chest.
Moore, 38, of nearby East 185th Street, was initially listed as being in serious but stable condition but died Friday, NYPD said.
Moore, the father to an 8-year-old daughter, Charly, was coming home from work at Citifield when he was killed, his family said.
“They got him. Thank God. They said they had good video. They made a promise to me and they did it. They got him,” Moore’s mother, Frances Vanterpoole Moore, 73, said of the arrest.
The devastated mom said she felt sorry for the accused stabber — and that he was “lucky” the police got to him before Moore’s friends, who were “ready to kill him.”
“I hope God bless his soul because he has to pay for this. I will be at every court appearance,” she said of the suspect.
“You’re going to pay for this,” she said of Lemons. “You took my child’s life, you took my life. You took [Charly’s] life. … Why are you walking around with a knife? You are out to harm somebody. He’s lucky the police got him.”
The 6-foot-1, 240-pound Moore was a doting dad who loved to play basketball and play video games. He worked two jobs and lived with his mom, a cancer survivor, to help c are for her, she said.
“They called him the gentle giant,” she said. “He was just trying to come home. No criminal record. He don’t sell drugs, he don’t hang out in the streets. My baby was just trying to get home because he had to pick up his daughter. She spent the weekend. And you kill my baby? For what?”
Lemons, who initially fled the elevated subway platform to the street level, was arrested in the Bronx early Saturday, police said.
He has been charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal weapons possession.
The terrifying incident occurred the day after a 31-year-old man was slashed during a fight at the Times Square subway station, and the week after the fatal stabbing of 43-year-old Tommy Bailey on the L train.
A homeless man, Alvin Charles, was charged with the murder in Bailey’s death, police said.
The rash of transit crimes has many New Yorkers on edge — and some are blaming Mayor Eric Adams.
Hizzoner on Saturday was greeted at the annual Columbus Day parade in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, by one heckler who gave him an earful over the subways being unsafe.
“Go on the subway and get murdered, thank you, Mr. Mayor,” fumed a 68-year Bath Beach resident and retired US Postal worker.
“Well look at the city — it’s a s-t hole,” he added. “The subways, fuggedaboutit! I’ve been here all my life — 68 years — and I never saw the city as bad as it is now.”