Overview
- Surveillance video shows Ross Falzone, 76, shoved down the 18th Street subway stairs Thursday night, and he later died at Bellevue Hospital.
- Police say officers had taken Rhamell Burke, 32, to Bellevue for a psychiatric evaluation earlier that day, and the hospital released him after about an hour.
- Detectives arrested Burke at Penn Station on Friday, prosecutors charged him with murder, and a judge ordered him held without bail at Rikers Island.
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered an immediate review of Bellevue’s handling of the case, and state health officials opened a wider probe of psychiatric evaluation and discharge practices at city-run hospitals.
- Court records show Burke had several recent arrests for assaults and chaotic subway incidents, intensifying debate over how hospitals, prosecutors, and judges handle repeat dangerous behavior.