Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police are seeking information about the assault
A New York man has been stabbed to death in a city subway train, police say.
The attack, which happened during rush hour, has been described as “completely unprovoked” by investigators.
No arrests have been made in connection with the incident, but police say they are looking for someone who was riding the train at the time.
They are also asking riders to report any passengers who may have been carrying a knife.
Victim Phil Williams, 29, was killed on a R train, heading to Queens around 4.30pm on Saturday.
Passengers heard someone yelling “stab him” and then heard the man hit with a knife, CBS New York reported.
The attack was witnessed by a woman and her four-year-old child who were sitting down in the train car, as well as a doctor from Bellevue Hospital who was heading to the hospital.
‘Socially unacceptable’
“I was terrified – I’ve never been terrified in my life,” the doctor told CNN.
“The train stopped for a minute, and I said, ‘they’re stabbing someone’, and a passenger said, ‘What?’ and we ran outside.”
New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner James O’Neill described the attack as “horrific”.
“I don’t think anybody in New York who is a person of peace – right or wrong – sees any kind of thing like this as a reality and it’s completely outrageous,” he said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio later spoke about the incident on the NY1 News news channel.
“What I don’t want our city to be is a place where people have to fear for the subway as a place to go, because it’s social unacceptable,” he said.
Last October, an 18-year-old woman was stabbed by a stranger in a New York subway station.
That attack prompted calls from subway operators to tackle knife crime, and officials have recently seen an increase in reported attacks.