Subway Murder Sparks Outrage and Probe of Hospital that Released Alleged Killer

A Chelsea subway station is once again at the center of firestorm after a 76-year-old upper west side resident was shoved down the stairway, bashed his head and died on May 7. His death prompted anguished calls as to why the suspect who was arrested the next day had been discharged from the psych ward of Bellevue Hospital only hours before the unprovoked attack.

The victim, Ross Falzone, a retired special education high school teacher who lived on tree-lined West 85th Street, was walking north on Seventh Ave. toward the station at W. 18th St. shortly after 9:30 p.m. on May 7.

A year and Eighteen months earlier, earlier, Joseph Lynskey was attacked at the same subway station and suffered life threatening injuries after being pushed onto the tracks.

The suspect in the latest violent incident was identified by police as 32-year-old Rhamell Burke. Prosecutors said Burke walked up behind Falzone at the top of the stairs and violently shoved him from behind, causing him to tumble down the stairway head first and suffer a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib. Police discovered Falzone at the foot of the stairs and rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, but his injuries were too severe and died around 3 a.m. the following day.

Police picked him up in Penn Station the day after the incident and he was charged with murder in the second degree and remanded him without bail pending his next court appearance on May 14. He had been released from a psych ward at Bellevue only hours before the fatal attack triggering calls for an investigation of the hospital. Burke was reportedly a one-time Broadway dancer, but at the time of the attack prosecutors said he was undomiciled.

Prosecutors said video surveillance showed Burke approaching Falzone from behind and shoving him down the stairs. No words were spoken.

”I am horrified by the killing of Ross Falzone and the circumstances that led to it,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani on May 8. He ordered “an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy.”

Bellevue said it welcomed the review.

Burke had been arrested four times in the three months before the attack, police said.

The most recent incident before the deadly subway shove came just outside the 17th Pct. on E. 51st. St. Police said he had approached officers outside the station with a stick he had picked up from a pile of garbage. He complied with an order to drop the stick. Police put in cruiser and brought him to Bellevue’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program for evaluation but he was released just over an hour later.

City Council speaker Julie Menin, who represents the UES where Burke was detained by police outside the 17th Pct and brought to Bellevue joined in the call for accountability demanding that NYC Health + Hospitals “conduct a full review of its intake and release of the suspect and make any necessary changes to prevent this kind of tragedy from occurring in the future.” Council member Lynn Schulman, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Committee on Health, joined Menin in pressing for a thorough probe.

"The crime is devastating on numerous levels, including the senseless murder of Ross Falzone, a beloved Upper West Side resident who devoted his life to his students,” said Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal. He pointed out that the latest attack came a year after a similar attack in December, 2024, that left 43 year old Joseph Lynskey with a fractured skull, four broken ribs and a ruptured spleen after he was shoved onto the tracks at the very same subway station in December 2024.

Police arrested 23 year old Kamel Hawkins and charged him with attempted murder of the 43 year-old musician in that case. After a court ordered psychiatric evaluation known as a 730 exam, Hawkins was found unfit to stand trial in November 2025. He was remanded to the Office of Mental Health custody at a state facility where he currently remains. Prosecutors said if and when he is returned to fitness, his case would resume.

Congressman Daniel Goldman also weighed in on the latest violent incident and said it showed the shortcoming of our nation’s mental health system.

"The killing of Ross Falzone isn’t only a tragedy, but more proof that our mental health system is inadequate. The death could have been avoided by Michelle Go Act which expands psych beds covered by Medicaid,” he said.

The state law was passed a year ago named after Michelle Go, the 40-year-old Chinese-American woman who was fatally shoved in front of an oncoming subway train at the Times Square-42nd Street station back in 2022.

Goldman re-introduced legislation named the Michelle Alyssa Go Act, which seeks to expand the number of inpatient psychiatric beds eligible for Medicaid reimbursement in an effort to get more people assistance. “Everyone deserves mental health resources,” said Goldman.

Carolyn D. Gorman a fellow at the Manhattan Institute said: “It was the quintessential preventable tragedy.”

“I think there are two issues: There’s a lack of [patient] beds, and there’s a lack of willingness to hold individuals, whether in a locked psychiatric facility... or in a locked jail or prison.”