ABC 7 screenshot/Facebook Sean Conaboy and Joshua Nazario
Sean Conaboy, a freelance photographer, saved a woman in a chilling New York subway attack. You can watch the video below, but be aware that it’s troubling.
The video shows the suspect walk up casually behind a strange woman, while holding a knife. He then started to randomly stab her. That’s when Conaboy jumped in.
According to ABC 7, which obtained the video, the victim is a 54-year-old Brooklyn, New York, woman, who was slashed while stabbing inside the 14th Street-Union Square station around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.
Here’s what you need to know:
Conaboy Said, ‘I Just Jumped Him. I just Tackled Him’
“I heard a woman scream, and so that’s enough for me,” Conaboy said. “I just jumped him, I just tackled him, jumped on his back. And that took us down to the platform surface. I’m trying desperately to keep him down, facedown, because I know that if he gets up, or if he can turn on me, and he has that knife now, I’m a potential victim,” Conaboy told ABC 7.
Other people also jumped in to help.
The television station named the alleged attacker as 22-year-old Joshua Nazario.
Conaboy is a freelance camera operator for CBC news, a Canadian news outlet, according to CBC.
“I’m just happy to be alive, and I’m even more fortunate that I was able to help somebody who was in severe distress and could have potentially lost her life as the result of a random act of violence,” Conaboy said, according to CBC.
The Victim Told Local Television, ‘I Wouldn’t Wish It on Anybody’
The Daily News identified the victim as Kelli Daley. However, she spoke to the local CBS affiliate and credited Conaboy with possibly saving her life.
“I was just standing there and all of a sudden, I felt an arm reach behind me, almost like somebody who knew me was hugging me,” she said. “I felt the impact of something and I screamed several times and then somebody tackled him.”
She added, “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Attacks are up at subway stations, CBS reported, adding that there have been 187 felony assaults in transit so far this year, up from 142 at the same time last year. There was another random stabbing at a New York subway station on May 20, 2021.
“The city has to get its act together. This can’t continue,” Conaboy said to the television station.
According to the Daily News, the suspect’s relative said Nazario had mental health and was on drugs for schizophrenia but “had run out of his medication.”
“He started acting strangely about two weeks ago,” the aunt told the news site. “His medication ran out. That’s when I found out he was schizophrenic.”
She described another disturbing incident to Daily News. “His mom lives in Canada,” she said. “He drove to the border and left her car. He just walked through the woods and across the border about five months ago. They found him in a hospital in Buffalo.”
Nazario was arrested and charged with multiple offenses after the stabbing.
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