A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged with murder on Thursday in the killing of a 26-year-old man inside a subway station in Midtown Manhattan last weekend, the police said.
The teenager, whose name has not been released by the authorities, was arrested just before 12:30 p.m. on Thursday. He was booked on charges of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a loaded gun, according to the police.
He is accused of fatally shooting Darrel Rodriguez, a security guard from the Bronx, after the two got into an argument on a platform in the Seventh Avenue Station on 53rd Street, several blocks north of Times Square. Mr. Rodriguez was standing on the northbound E train platform a little after noon on Saturday when he encountered the 17-year-old, who was wearing a black mask, the police said.
The dispute moved from the platform, briefly onto a train and then back to the platform, the police said. The 17-year-old pulled out a gun and shot Mr. Rodriguez once in the chest before running out of the station and up Seventh Avenue, the police said.
Mr. Rodriguez was taken by emergency medical workers to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, and was later pronounced dead, the police said.
Mr. Rodriguez’s fraternal twin brother, Derick Rodriguez of Waco, Texas, said in an interview on Monday that he was heartbroken by the loss. The two grew up together in the Bronx, and Derick Rodriguez, who was a few minutes older than his brother, left in 2021 to join the Army.
“It’s like a black hole in your heart,” he said. “It is grief, but it is something deeper because this is your half.”
The arrest of the 17-year-old boy on Thursday, five days after Mr. Rodriguez’s death, was the latest development in a case that has renewed debate about safety in the city’s transit system. The killing was the seventh on the subway so far this year, up from four during the same period last year and 10 the year before, according to Vital City, a civic think tank that analyzes police data.
Overall major crime in the transit system — a category that includes felonies like robbery, burglary and rape, as well as murder — has risen slightly so far this year compared with last year, though overall major offenses on the subway have been trending down slightly since 2022, according to the Police Department. As of Oct. 18, there have been 1,737 crimes in the transit system since the start of the year, 29 more than the same period in 2025, Police Department data shows.
Several high-profile slashings and killings on the subway in recent years have also shaken New Yorkers. And shootings involving teenagers, both as perpetrators and targets, have risen in recent years, even as other major crimes in the city have declined.
Between the start of the year and Aug. 16, there were 66 shooting victims under the age of 18 reported to the Police Department, nine of whom died. There were 72 teenage perpetrators in the same period, the department said. Those numbers represent a decrease from 2022, when there were 116 teenage victims and 98 perpetrators, but a sharp rise from the years before the pandemic.
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