Gunman Kills Four on N.Y. Commuter Train : Crime: 20 wounded in random Long Island shootings. Suspect is arrested after being subdued by passengers.

A lone gunman walked down the aisle of a crowded Long Island Rail Road commuter train Tuesday evening, firing at random as rush-hour passengers screamed in terror, sought refuge in restrooms and fled from car to car for their lives. At least four people were slain and 20 were wounded.

Shaken riders described the panic among passengers as the 5:33 p.m. train from New York City’s Penn Station neared this Long Island town.

“The guy just went berserk,” Diane McCleary, a passenger, told WCBS-TV. “The shots just kept going off. He would not stop shooting . . . My father jumped on the guy. The girl next to him got blown away.”

Other witnesses said the gunman, who was eventually overpowered by some of the riders, stopped to reload and continued shooting. Blood on the windows of the train testified to the carnage. People fell with head wounds and bullet wounds to the body.

The gunman, in police custody, was not immediately identified.

At least five of the injured were in critical condition in local hospitals near Garden City. Police said three were clinging to life. Tens of thousands of other riders were delayed as rail service in both directions was halted. Ambulances, police officers and frantic relatives converged on the scene.

Passengers described scenes of stark terror as riders--some bloody--raced into their cars fleeing the gunman.

A shaken woman passenger, who escaped uninjured, said: “A man came in and he had blood on his hand and he said, ‘Get up! Someone is shooting a gun.’ He said, ‘Run! run! . . . More and more people kept piling into the car and kept running forward trying to get to the front of the train, trying to get away from where this is happening.

” . . . People ran into the bathroom and locked the doors. I just kept running to try to get away. We were screaming. Everyone was in the front car screaming, ‘Open the door! Open the door!’ ”

The woman said that when the conductor hesitated, another passenger ripped open a panel, pulled some wires and the doors opened. Passengers then raced onto a station platform to safety.

Nassau County Police spokesman Andrew DeSimone said that three men and a woman were killed. All were shot in their seats in the third car of the train.

Detectives investigating the carnage said eyewitnesses described a “horror scene” with “blood everywhere.”

“He was walking down the aisle randomly picking out victims,” DeSimone said.

Eyewitnesses, who saw police leading the shooter away in handcuffs, said he looked calm. But the frenzy aboard the train left many passengers so shaken they spoke only with difficulty.

“I was at the back, by the door, and we heard a loud, like popping noise,” Mark Heiney, a passenger, told CNN. “Someone was poking a gun into the seats and randomly firing and I got down as quickly as I could. He must have run out of bullets.

“I was about five feet away from him and I heard him stop firing, and I got up quickly and ran down the aisle as quickly as I could and got out of the way,” Heiney said. “I jumped into another set of seats after a couple of seconds. And he started shooting again, and he was doing it as he walked up the aisle toward everybody and herding everyone toward the front of the train.

“I think he ran out of bullets again and reloaded, so I think he reloaded twice, but it’s kind of blurred in my mind. He started shooting again and I got winged in the head by something and it knocked me to the ground. There was a stampede of people and at that point he ran out of bullets, I think for the third time,” Heiney said. “Someone yelled, ‘Get him!’ and before he could reload again the train finally pulled into the next station.”

Police quickly cordoned off the Merillon Avenue station with yellow tape as stricken relatives searched for loved ones among the passengers.

The Long Island Rail Road is the nation’s largest commuter line, carrying about 240,000 riders each day between New York City and suburban Long Island.

Initial estimates were that the gunman fired two clips of bullets and may have been trying to reload again as he methodically sought out victims with his 9-millimeter handgun. Among those struck was a woman seven months pregnant. She was not seriously injured and physicians said her unborn child did not appear to be harmed.

“Right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything as far as a motive,” DeSimone said. “It seems like a random shooting.”

Police said the gunman, who boarded the train at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, was subdued by three male riders.

One of them, Kevin Blum, 42, a Wall Street bond trader, came face to face with the gunman, his wife, Susanne, told the newspaper Newsday. “My husband and two other men jumped on him and held him until police came,” she said. “It happened so fast. Everyone was so scared.”

She said that afterward her husband felt lucky to be alive, but wished he had helped jump the gunman sooner--which might have saved more people. “He said, ‘It’s Christmas time and these poor families are going to be getting this kind of call,’ ” Susanne Blum said.

The Blums moved to Long Island from New York City a year ago, because they wanted to raise their four children in a tranquil suburb, she said.

The shootings broke out aboard the train crowded with commuters about 6 p.m. as it traveled about 18 miles from the city on its way to Hicksville, Long Island. The carnage was massive.

“There were just bodies all over the place,” passenger Diane McCleary told reporters. “Guys were shot in the head. It was disgusting. The girl next to my father was blown away.”

Police took several dozen eyewitnesses to headquarters, where they were interviewed by detectives.

The silver-colored train stood illuminated by floodlights in the station as other detectives and teams of forensic experts methodically went through its cars, recovering spent bullets and collecting other evidence.

Police said the gunman started his rampage in the rear of the third car, and moved toward the front as he shot. Some victims were found at the car’s doors, and it was not immediately clear whether they were hit at the doors or earlier and were trying to flee. The car seats 80 passengers, and police said the man was shooting at riders on both sides of the aisle.

“As soon as the door closed, I heard a loud pop like a firecracker,” Lucinda Melkonian, 26, of Garden City, told Newsday. She was sitting in the front of the third car when the gunman began advancing up the aisle. “Someone said, ‘This is real life, everybody.’ My cousin and I crouched down . . . I looked up at him and saw a man with a beard. His arm was going from right to left and left to right.”

Esther Confino, who was also in the third car, said the woman next to her was unconscious, and “her blood was all over me.” Confino said she covered her head and began to pray. “It sounded like 20 times, it was quite rapid,” said Confino. “It stopped for a very short interval and then he started shooting again.”

Farther back in the train, passengers were oblivious to the shooting.

“We were all moaning about the train being late. No one realized how grave the situation really was,” Bruce Burns, of Mineola, told Cablevision’s News 12.

The carnage came amid a national debate over handgun control, and was the latest in a series of mass killings to stun the country.

In one of the worst mass murders in recent years, 23 people were slain in a Texas restaurant in 1991 by a gunman, who took his own life.

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson and New York bureau researcher Audrey Britton contributed to this story. Special correspondent Helaine Olen reported from Garden City.

Commuter Nightmare

The shooting took place at a station in Garden City on Long Island, 18 miles east of New York City. The gunfire broke out shortly after 6 p.m., witnesses said. The train was headed from Penn Station to Port Jefferson.