Mayor's subway safety plan personal for members of Asian American community who knew Michelle Go
NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams' plan for subway safety is personal for members of the Asian American community who knew Michelle Go, who was killed after being pushed into an oncoming train in January.
CBS2's Jessica Moore spoke with two women who described their unimaginable loss.
"I was numb. I just felt stunned. I was just in a state of shock," said Jieun Ko, who will never forget the morning Go was killed. "I was disturbed that it happened at 9:30 in the morning, like that's in broad daylight. I hated the quickness of it. It was just, in a moment, that's it."
Go, a 40-year-old financial manager and active volunteer, was shoved into an oncoming train at the Times Square station. Police said her attacker was 61-year-old Simon Martial, a homeless man with a history of mental illness.
"After her accident, after her incident, I couldn't take the train for a while and when I did take the train, I had a physical PTSD response happening in my body," Ko said.
Deb Fong took powerful images at Go's vigil and described the tragic irony that Go was killed by the exact kind of person she dedicated her life to helping.
"It's incredibly compelling to know that she, as a human, as an individual, understood the necessity of addressing that crisis and really took that head on," Fong said. "Beyond unfortunate, super tragic that her death, unfortunately, speaks directly to what I think is core to the problem."
Mayor Adams' new subway safety plan would send squads of social workers, nurses and cops to target the subway's homeless population and convince them to get help and housing.
"Do you feel hopeful hearing the plan?" Moore asked.
"In theory, sure," Fong said. "My concern is that we have a lot of talk and I'm not sure that it's going to translate to really effective, tangible action."
"I want people to remember that she was someone's daughter, that she was someone's sister, that she was so loved and cherished," Ko added.
"It's a loss for all of us, really, and certainly a loss for New Yorkers. It's a loss for society that could benefit from people like her who are taking active roles to try to make everything a little bit better," Fong said.
Both women vowed to continue Go's work so that her legacy lives on long after her death.
According to the NYPD, transit crimes are up by 65% in the first two months of 2022 compared to 2021.
