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| In this image provided by the New York City Police Department, a composite sketch showing the woman believed to have pushed a man to his death in front of a subway train on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 is shown. Police arrested Erika Menendez on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012, after a passer-by on a street noticed she resembled the woman seen in a surveillance video. The attack was the second time this month that a man was pushed to his death in a city subway station. |
NEW YORK (AP) -- The family of a woman accused of shoving a man to his death in front of a subway train called police several times in the past five years because she had not been taking prescribed medication and was difficult to deal with, authorities said Monday.
Erika
Menendez, 31, was being held without bail on a murder charge in the
death of Sunando Sen. She told police she pushed the 46-year-old India
native because she thought he was Muslim, and she hates them, according
to prosecutors.
They had never met before she
suddenly shoved him off the subway platform because she "thought it
would be cool," prosecutors said. The victim was Hindu, not Muslim.
It
wasn't clear whether Menendez had a diagnosed mental condition. But her
previous arrests and legal troubles paint a portrait of a troubled
woman.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly would
not say what medication she was taking or whether she had a psychiatric
history. Authorities were called to her home five times since 2005 on
reports of an emotionally disturbed person.
In one instance, police said, she threw a radio at the responding officers.
Menendez
had been arrested several times, starting when she was young. In 2003,
she was arrested on charges she punched a 28-year-old man in the face
inside her Queens home, but the case was later dropped. She pleaded
guilty later that year to assaulting a stranger on the street near her
home. The victim, retired Fire
Department official Daniel Conlisk, said
the attack was violent and relentless.
He said
he was sorting recyclables outside his home one night when Menendez
approached him and punched him in the face, screaming that he was having
sex with her mother.
"It was such a shot," Conlisk said. "And I was surprised she hit so hard, because she was just a girl."
He
said he tried to fend her off as she clawed at his skin. He eventually
broke free and went inside his home, where he called police. When they
arrived, he said, she was still outside screaming about him having sex
with her mother, and saying he had stolen jewelry from her in high
school.
"That's when everyone realized there's
really something wrong with her," he said. Conlisk, 65, said he took
out two restraining orders against her but never saw her after he was
attacked.
He said that he felt bad that he pressed charges, but that she seemed dangerous.
"I really believe if she had a knife, she would have killed me," he said.
In December 2003, Menendez was arrested for cocaine possession. She was given a conditional discharge after pleading guilty.
Last
Thursday, witnesses said a woman pacing and mumbling to herself
suddenly shoved Sen off the elevated platform of a No. 7 train that
travels between Manhattan and Queens. She fled.
Menendez
was spotted by a passer-by who called 911 and said she resembled the
wanted suspect. When she was arrested, she told police she shoved Sen
because she blamed Muslims and Hindus for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and had been "beating them up" ever since, according to authorities.
She said she thought Sen was Muslim.
Sen, a Kolkata native, owned a print shop and had lived in Queens for decades.
She
laughed and snickered so much during her court hearing last weekend
that the judge admonished her.
The attorney who represented her only for
her arraignment said she acted the same way with him when he tried to
speak with her. He had no further comment.
Calls
to Menendez's home on Monday were unanswered. Angel Luis Santiago, who
used to work at the Queens building where Menendez's mother and
stepfather live, said he was shocked by her arrest on the murder charge.
"It surprised me what she did," he said. "She never acted that way."
