A Crown Heights man was shot and killed in a Bed-Stuy subway station late on Wednesday night, according to police.
Law enforcement sources said the victim — 47-year-old Freddie Weston of Sterling Place — was killed next to a MetroCard vending machine at the Rockaway Avenue train station in Bedford-Stuyvesant at around 11:14 p.m. on Sept. 4.
Officers from the 73rd Precinct and NYPD Transit District 33 found Weston on the station’s mezzanine level, next to the vending machine, with a single gunshot wound to his head.
Paramedics rushed Weston to Brookdale University Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Sources familiar with the case said that so far, detectives have not located any witnesses to the shooting, and that an MTA worker heard the shot before making the grim discovery and contacting police. One bullet casing was also found at the scene.
The Rockaway Avenue station was immediately shut down and police officials could be seen hurriedly rushing up and down the staircase leading to the C line into the early morning hours.
The NYPD did not immediately have a description of a perpetrator. Detectives are now canvassing security video taken in and around the station, hoping to find clues that lead them to Weston’s killer.
As of Thursday morning, no arrests had been in the ongoing investigation.
The killing was the fourth shooting death in New York City’s subways this year, according to Gothamist. Three of those killings, including Weston’s, occurred in Brooklyn — in January, 45-year-old Richard Henderson was shot and killed on board a train at the Franklin Avenue station in Crown Heights, and a 36-year-old man was shot in the head during a fight at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets station in March.
Despite those shootings, transit crime is down across the city. Officials on Wednesday said 2024 has so far been the safest year for subway crime since 2010 — not counting the pandemic, when ridership was uncharacteristically low — and both homicides and shootings are also down citywide so far this year.
But the 73rd Precinct, where Wednesday’s shooting took place, is an outlier, per the latest NYPD statistics. In 2024, homicide in the precinct is up 116.7% compared to last year, and shootings are up 20%. Transit crime in the precinct has climbed, with 44 total incidents reported so far this year, up 41.9%.
Anyone with information regarding the incident or the perpetrator’s whereabouts can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS (for Spanish, dial 888-57-PISTA). You can also submit tips online at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (formerly Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
A version of this story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site amNewYork.
— Additional reporting by Kirstyn Brendlen