Man Is Fatally Shot Aboard a Subway Train in Brooklyn

A 45-year-old man was fatally shot on a subway train in Brooklyn on Sunday evening after interceding in an argument between two other passengers over loud music in the car, the police said.

The man, Richard Henderson, was shot aboard a Manhattan-bound No. 3 train Sunday evening as the train was nearing the Rockaway Avenue stop in the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn, the police said.

The train continued on to the Franklin Avenue station in Crown Heights, just a few stops from Mr. Henderson’s home, where the police responded to a 911 call around 8:15 p.m. Mr. Henderson, who was shot in the back and shoulder, was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

No arrests have been made in the case. It is not clear whether the gunman was targeting Mr. Henderson or another passenger, the police said.

It was the latest difficult episode for New York’s subway system, in many ways the backbone of the city, which has struggled in the early weeks of 2024.

Already this year, there have been two train derailments, one of which injured 26 people and led to significant service disruptions for days.

And last week, a teenage boy was killed in what authorities said was a “subway surfing” incident, in which thrill-seekers ride atop cars. It was the second such death in two months.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday’s killing.

Shootings on subway trains are rare and make up a fraction of the gun crimes in New York City. In November, two people were shot on a moving subway car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. They sustained minor injuries.

Overall, shootings in the city, which spiked during the height of the pandemic, have come down. In 2023, about 1,100 people were shot, roughly 400 fewer than in the previous year.

Jeff Spinner-Halev, 59, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was visiting his daughter in Brooklyn, was at the Franklin Avenue station about an hour after the shooting.

He said in an interview that the shooting made him worried for his daughter, and he was concerned that there were too many guns in the city. But he noted that murder rates were going down.

“I don’t think New York is particularly dangerous,” he said. “These shootings happen in all kinds of places.”

Maria Cramer contributed reporting.