New York subway passenger fights with Alex Rakitin after he was punched in the face by another N train passenger in Brooklyn

EASTERN VILLAGE — What started as a simple morning trip to New York ended in an assault case.

Allex Rakitin said he took the N train to work at 8:30 a.m. on Monday.

Rakitin told WABC, the ABC affiliate in New York, that he had had encounters with people on the subway before, but this was the first time the violence escalated into an assault.

“He’s being aggressive because I apparently sat too close to him even though I wasn’t sitting in the next seat,” he said. “He just felt like it was his personal space and he was being very aggressive. I told him to just chill. Just chill. It’s 8:30 in the morning. I’m just going to work. Nobody needs this. Just relax. And it just escalated.”

Video recorded by a witness shows a man identified as Timothy Barbee punching Rakitin in the face, causing his glasses to fly off.

The film could have stopped at this point, but the confrontation continued.

“I jumped up to him and just grabbed him.” – Rakitin said. “And I thought, ‘Just don’t let go, because he’s so much bigger than me.’ I don’t know what was going through his mind, so I just held him until the police came.”

Rakitin says the 34-year-old started screaming for help, but he didn’t let go for fear of what Barbee might do next.

Barbee was arrested and charged with assault. Rakitin was not seriously injured.

This event comes as Mayor Eric Adams praises the drop in subway crime.

“As you know, we have seen crime decline for 10 months in a row. Even in the last month in our metro, we have seen over a 20% reduction in crime in our metro,” he said.

But for some, like Rakitin, these numbers do not reflect what they see every day.

“Anyone who gets on the subway in the morning knows they are going to a dangerous place,” he said. “It’s just the reality we live in.”