Before cops say he stabbed veteran MTA subway operator Myran Pollack and left him in a medically-induced coma last week, Jonathan Davalos attacked another subway conductor in a terrifying random attack, the victim told the Daily News.
Ruffin Cutler, 63, told the News how Davalos smashed his fists into his face on Jan. 18, 2020, while the unsuspecting train operator was giving an elderly woman directions.
Davalos was riding a downtown No. 6 train from Pelham Bay to the end of the line at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, when the woman approached the conductor’s compartment and asked Cutler for help. Cutler opened the compartment door, and Davalos pounced.
“He jumped up and started pounding me. He hit me in the face, we started struggling till I was able to break free and pull the door shut,” Cutler recalled. “When he attacked me there was no conversation or nothing. No words were exchanged. I never seen him before in my life…. That guy’s a lunatic. I just thank God he didn’t have a knife when he attacked me. The outcome might have been different.”
Davalos was arrested that day, and later indicted on felony assault. But the COVID epidemic hit, and after several months on Rikers Island, his Legal Aid lawyer successfully argued for his release to a treatment program that October — over prosecutors’ objections, according to a spokeswoman for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.
Judge Maxwell Wiley made the decision, but Davalos washed out of that program, and a bench warrant was issued in March 2021.
A month later, he stabbed a 21-year-old woman in the shoulder in a random, unprovoked attack at the W. 135th St. train station. He wound up getting three and a half years for both the stabbing and the assault on Cutler.
“They keep giving these guys a slap on the wrist and letting them out. Nobody gets seven years. Cutler said, referring to the maximum penalty for second-degree assault on a transit worker. “They’re lucky if they get 60 days.
“We fear for our lives.”
Attacks on transit workers have gone up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the assaults persist even as overall levels of transit crime have gone down. The MTA’s most recent available data reports 30 assaults on subway workers between January 2024 and July 2024.
There were 81 such attacks on subway workers in 2023, up from 51 in 2022. Those stats exclude incidents that do not rise to the legal definition of assault, like menacing, making threats, or other forms of harassment — which transit workers say they repeatedly experience on the job.
MTA chair Janno Lieber has repeatedly called on prosecutors to go after recidivist offenders.
“There is a huge number of crimes that still take place in the transit system by people who do it again and again and again — and this guy is one of them,” he said of Davalos last week while Pollack was still undergoing emergency surgery
“He’s been in jail for attacking MTA customers and employees before. He got out in February, and he’s done it again.” “Crime is down, but recidivism has a disproportionate impact on New Yorkers,” Lieber added.
“We’ve got to find a way to get people like this perpetrator out of the public space, out of the subways so they don’t attack people again and again,” he said.
Cutler mused that if not for the Taylor Law, which prohibits state public employees from striking, MTA workers would walk out over safety worries.
“We shouldn’t have have to work in fear for our lives, wondering if we’re going to come home to our families,” Cutler said. “We’re not police officers for God’s sake. We move the whole city. People should be praising us. Without us, the whole city would shut down.”
Cutler said he suffered panic attacks on the job as a result of the beating, and he continues to see a psychologist to manage the trauma.
“I’m still going to therapy. I got a psychologist I speak to on a regular basis. Sometimes I have flashbacks. It’s hard to work.”
On Tuesday, Davalos struck again, police allege, stabbing Myran Pollack, after the 59-year-old subway operator told him he had to leave the No. 4 train when it reached its last stop at at Utica Ave. stop in Crown Heights.
Davalos stabbed Pollack twice in each arm, once in each shoulder and three times in the stomach, and carved a nasty gash into his leg, nearly severing his femoral artery, police allege. Pollack has undergone multiple rounds of surgery.
Davalos is now being held without bail on attempted murder and assault charges.
Culter was shocked to hear Davalos had attacked another MTA worker, and hopes he’ll now spend years in prison.
“My wife is never going to believe this,” Cutler said. “I was hoping i would never hear this guy’s name again. At least I know the idiot’s going to go away for along time now.”
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