Alexander Rakitin, Timothy Barbee (YouTube screencap).
Looks like somebody had a case of the Mondays.
Yesterday morning, Alexander Rakitin, 42, was riding the N train to his job in Manhattan. Little did he know, the man in the next seat, Timothy Barbee, 34, was about to escalate a minor leg bump into 3rd degree assault.
As reported in the New York Post, Rakitin's knee allegedly bumped Barbee's, an occurrence so common on the subway as to usually go ignored. The two volleyed verbally until, suddenly, Barbee hit Rakitin in the face, knocking his glasses askew.
Rakitin managed to pin Barbee, and proceeded to wait until a fellow straphanger got the police to assist at a subsequent stop.
That's when things turned weird--or more specifically, woke.
Riders allegedly began to defend Barbee, trying to offer him water to drink while Rakitin subdued him. Others urged Rakitin to release his assailant. Call it the George Floyd Effect, or perhaps still-fresh memories of the Daniel Penny-Jordan Neely chokehold incident, but the urge to defend the attacker is a strange new wrinkle in New York crowd dynamics.
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Police finally arrived on the scene. Rakitin refused medical assistance, and Barbee was booked for 3rd degree assault.
The manslaughter trial of Daniel Penny, the former Marine who held the crazed Jordan Neely in a chokehold after Neely threatened a carful of F train riders in May of 2023, is coming to its conclusion.
Several pieces of potentially exculpatory evidence have come to light over the course of the trial. Neely was high on narcotics, schizophrenic, and suffered from sickle cell anemia, and was experiencing a "sickle cell crisis" during the altercation.
Penny benefits from the fact that several witnesses have stated that Neely was a clear and present danger and were grateful for Penny's intervention. Others felt Penny was too forceful for too long.
In any case, the George Floyd saga we endured together as a divided nation clearly cast its long shadow on both of these subway incidents.
