The subway crew operating the uptown 6 train where a vicious fistfight left a woman bleeding severely from the face followed every protocol, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman told Gothamist. Once the crew realized that a brawl between two straphangers had broken out in the Third Avenue-138th Street station on Dec. 13 at around 1:30 am, the conductor alerted the Rail Control Center of "the fight occurring on the platform and his inability to close the doors," said MTA Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges.
The Rail Control Center then notified police. Meanwhile, straphangers informed a station booth attendant, who in turn contacted the Rail Control Center at around 1:34 am. Police got to the station booth at approximately 1:35 am, but by then one of the pugilists had fled and the train had departed. Cops requested that the crew halt the train at a nearby stop, "but train was in motion, so it was instructed to wait for PD at Hunts Point" — six stations away. By the time the train arrived at Hunts Point, the bald man and the bloodied woman had already exited, so police "did not get a chance to interview them."
In an e-mail, Fleuranges added:
"So in the end, crew did everything right — they notified RCC. Unfortunately neither the M/H hispanic involved in the fight or any other customer informed the crew of the extent of the female customer's injuries."
