Subway Shootings Fray NYC’s Nerves

Some passengers riding the No. 6 train on the Lexington Avenue line voiced concern Friday following the city’s fifth subway shooting in just over a month.

The latest victim, an unidentified 23-year-old man, was shot in the face and neck as he stood on a platform in Queens on Thursday night, waiting to travel to Manhattan. He remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition.

Witnesses told detectives that the man appeared to have been talking with his assailant before the gunfire.

Even though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Friday that the five shootings “all seem to be totally unrelated,” some riders were uneasy.

“I am definitely concerned ... a little nervous,” said Lisa Passmore, who was riding with her 3 1/2-month-old daughter. “But so far, so good.”

Others said they tried to put the attacks out of their minds.

“I try not to think about it,” Daniel Rivera, a 30-year-old bartender who said he travels by subway every day, said after he emerged from a train. “To think about it is a bit depressing.”

Three million people use the nation’s largest subway system daily.

Earlier in the week, Bloomberg, appearing with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, sought to reassure passengers.

“There’s no reason to panic,” he said.

So far, police have made no arrests in the shootings, which began May 24 when David Hart, head of Drake Business School, was shot during rush hour at a subway station in Queens, damaging his thigh bone.

Eight days later, Monica Meadows, a 22-year-old model and actress, was hit by a bullet but not seriously injured as the train she was riding approached the Times Square station. Police think a gun dropped in a paper bag went off.

On June 22, Stanford Nelson, a 29-year-old vocational school student, was killed on a train just after it pulled into the 23rd Street station in Manhattan. Detectives are searching for two men who fled.

And on Monday, a man who appeared emotionally disturbed opened fire at the Wall Street station. No one was injured.

Shootings in New York’s subway system have declined sharply since 1990, when there were 27 homicides. Last year, there were three killings. Nelson’s slaying was the first in 2004.