(The following story by Lindsay Faber and Rocco Parascandola appeared on Newsday?s website on January 8.)
NEW YORK — A Queens man fell asleep on an E train Wednesday night and woke to find a steak knife sticking out of his chest — put there by a fellow passenger in an unprovoked attack, police said.
Augustus Agapinan, 29, who moved to the city three years ago to pursue a physical therapy career, was riding home from the Bronx clinic where he works when he was stabbed at 9:05 p.m. Wednesday by a passenger who said nothing and fled the train, he said.
“I fell asleep on the train and I woke up around the Jamaica/Van Wyck stop and felt like someone had punched me. I was having trouble breathing,” Agapinan, of Richmond Hill, told Newsday from his bed at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, where he was in stable condition and set to be released Thursday evening.
“That’s when I looked down and saw the knife. People all around me were screaming, but I was in such a state of shock that I didn’t feel anything. I pulled the knife out myself,” he said.
A passenger got off the train and called police, Agapinan said. Others helped him unbutton his wool coat. But the doors of the train had already closed, and emergency crews didn’t meet him until he reached the next stop at Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue.
Police described the suspect as about 19 years old, 5-foot-9 and weighing about 200 pounds. He was wearing a navy blue jacket and a dark wool cap.
Agapinan said he believes the man got on the train in Jackson Heights and sat down next to him for several stops. Agapinan was not robbed, police said.
Despite a recent spree of subway attacks, including a fatal stabbing of a Bronx man Wednesday in an F train station in Manhattan, police said they did not believe the Queens incident to be part of any pattern.
Agapinan lives in a house with four other schoolmates from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. He said he is hoping to move to Las Vegas, where his wife, also a physical therapist, and his 3-year-old daughter recently moved to be with his mother-in-law.
“Now I want to go there more than ever,” he said.
Agapinan’s roommate, who started a job at Mary Immaculate the day his best friend was sent there with stab wounds, said the incident could have been avoided.
“Augustus was supposed to be in the Philippines this week visiting his parents, but there were delays processing his visa,” said Aristotle Iringan. “None of this would have happened.”
Agapinan did not undergo surgery, he said. His wound, which pierced his right nipple, was sutured.
“I spent the whole night awake, thinking about what happened to me and why. I used to read the Bible every day and I started missing some days. I wondered if God was trying to let me remember him again,” the devout Roman Catholic said.
“And then I started wondering if I could ever ride the subway again. I just don’t think I can,” he said.