A 35-year-old Mexican man was killed in a shooting on the New York City Subway on Monday afternoon, authorities said.
Five other people were wounded in the shooting, which occurred on a train when it was at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx.
On Tuesday morning, New York police identified the man who died as Obed Beltrán-Sánchez. He was shot in the chest and died at the scene, Reuters reported.
Mexico’s consul general in New York said on the X social media platform that the victim was from Tehuacán, a city in the state of Puebla.
“Unfortunately, yesterday afternoon, a compatriot from Tehuacán, Puebla, died from a stray bullet at the Mount Eden subway station,” Jorge Islas wrote.
“… I personally conveyed our condolences to his family and offered the consular support and advice within our reach. RIP.”
Police said that Beltrán-Sánchez had no permanent address. It was unclear how long he had been in the United States or whether he was working in New York.
New York police officials said that the shooting occurred amid a dispute between two groups of young men traveling on the same train. Beltrán-Sánchez was a bystander, according to local reports.
Michael M. Kemper, the Police Department’s chief of transit, told a press conference that a person involved in the dispute fired a shot when the train arrived at the Mount Eden Avenue station. A number of other shots were fired as passengers disembarked the train and ran for cover, Kemper said.
The five wounded people are aged 14 to 71 and were expected to recover, police said.
Reuters reported Tuesday afternoon that police were searching for three men suspected of killing Beltrán-Sánchez and wounding five others.
“Transit officials emphasized this week that shootings [on the New York Subway] are especially uncommon,” the news agency reported.
“In 2022, when a man with a handgun injured 10 people on a train passing through Brooklyn, it was the first mass shooting attack on the subway system since 1984.”
With reports from Milenio, The New York Times and Reuters
