A 44-year-old man armed with a machete attacked three elderly subway riders on the platform at Grand Central Terminal on Saturday morning before advancing on two NYPD detectives, ignoring more than 20 commands to drop the weapon, and getting shot dead, police said.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch identified the suspect as Anthony Griffin at a Saturday press conference. She said Griffin was "behaving erratically" and slashing bystanders while repeatedly declaring himself to be "Lucifer." One officer fired twice after Griffin refused to stop. Griffin was transported to a hospital and died.
The victims, an 84-year-old man, a 70-year-old woman, and a man described in police accounts as either 64 or 65 years old, were hospitalized. All three were listed in stable condition. Two NYPD officers also went to hospitals with minor injuries sustained during the confrontation.
Officers responded to a 911 call at 9:40 a.m. reporting an assault in progress at the train station. When they arrived on the subway platform, they found Griffin wielding the machete. Tisch said two detectives ordered him at least 20 times to drop the blade and attempted to de-escalate the encounter before Griffin advanced toward them with the weapon extended.
One officer then discharged his service weapon, striking Griffin twice. Tisch stated at the press conference:
"One officer discharged his firearm striking the perpetrator twice."
The eldest victim, the 84-year-old man, suffered lacerations to his face and head. The 70-year-old woman sustained shoulder lacerations. The older male victim suffered similar wounds plus an open skull fracture, the most severe injury reported among the three. The New York Post reported that Griffin was later pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.
None of the three victims have been publicly identified.
Tisch said Griffin had three prior unsealed arrests on his record. She added, however, that he had no history of being flagged as an emotionally disturbed person, a designation that, in NYPD parlance, triggers specific de-escalation protocols and mental-health follow-up.
That detail raises an uncomfortable question. A man with a criminal record walked onto one of the busiest transit platforms in the country on a Saturday morning carrying a machete, attacked three senior citizens, and declared himself to be the devil, yet nothing in his official file signaled the kind of instability that might have put him on law enforcement's radar beforehand. Incidents like a recent deadly stabbing rampage on the Beltway underscore how quickly edged-weapon attacks escalate and how little warning the public gets.
No motive for the attack has been disclosed. Police have not said whether Griffin knew any of his victims or chose them at random.
The MTA told Fox News Digital that the 4, 5, 6, and 7 trains were all skipping the Grand Central Terminal 42nd Street stop while the NYPD investigation continued. For a Saturday in midtown Manhattan, that means thousands of riders rerouted because one armed man turned a subway platform into a crime scene.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul weighed in on the incident in a Saturday morning post on X, calling it a "senseless act of violence." She wrote that Albany would work closely with the NYPD on the investigation and added:
"I'm grateful to our brave officers who acted quickly to stop the suspect."
Tisch, for her part, used the press conference to highlight recent staffing moves. She said the NYPD added 175 officers to the transit system last month, a deployment she framed as a direct response to the kind of random violence that unfolded Saturday.
Commissioner Tisch told reporters:
"Random acts of violence scare everyone. Anyone can be a victim of random violence and that is why it is so important for New Yorkers to understand that the NYPD has recently upped our presence in the transit system."
The commissioner's statement is worth pausing on. She is right that random violence scares everyone. But the implicit argument, that adding officers should reassure riders, only holds if those officers are empowered to act and if the broader criminal-justice system keeps dangerous people off the streets.
Griffin had three prior arrests. He was not flagged for mental-health intervention. He was free to board the subway with a machete. The 175 additional officers deployed last month did not prevent Saturday's attack. They did, however, put two detectives in position to end it before the body count climbed higher, and for that, those officers deserve credit, not second-guessing.
New York's ongoing debate over police use of force will almost certainly touch this case. Already, some city officials have pushed for criminal charges against officers involved in shootings of armed suspects. A recent controversy over an NYPD shooting of a knife-wielding man in Queens showed how quickly the political class can turn on officers who make split-second decisions under threat.
In Saturday's case, the facts, as laid out by the commissioner, leave little room for that kind of revisionism. Griffin received more than 20 verbal commands to drop the machete. He refused every one. He advanced on the officers. One fired. The attack stopped.
Across the country, officers face similar life-or-death confrontations with armed suspects. A Border Patrol encounter in Minneapolis and a fatal ambush of police near Atlanta are just two recent reminders that the men and women who respond to 911 calls run toward danger the rest of us run from.
Several facts remain unclear. Police have not said which specific subway line or platform the attack began on, nor have they explained how two officers sustained injuries during the confrontation. The identity of the officer who fired has not been released. And the discrepancy in the oldest male victim's age, described as 64 in one police account and 65 in another, has not been reconciled.
Whether Griffin will be linked to any prior violent incidents, whether he had a history of mental illness that fell outside the NYPD's formal tracking, and whether the city's revolving-door court system played any role in keeping him on the streets are all questions that demand answers in the days ahead.
For now, three elderly New Yorkers are in the hospital because they did something millions of people do every day, they rode the subway. The officers who stopped the man responsible did their job. The system that let him get that far has some explaining to do.
