A homeless man has been arrested for fatally stabbing a 54-year-old commuter on a Coney Island subway station platform last month, police said Friday.
Cops arrested Zhongqiang Chen, 32, for the Oct. 29 killing on Thursday evening and charged him with second degree murder, the NYPD said.
He’s accused of knifing victim Timothy Rudolph at the Stillwell Avenue station, the terminus for several Brooklyn subway lines, about 11:20 p.m. on Oct. 29, cops said.
Chen allegedly stabbed Rudolph in the back during a dispute, police said. Rudolph stumbled bleeding from the platform onto an idling N train, where responding cops found him sitting in a corner seat unconscious.
He was rushed by medics to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, but he couldn’t be saved.
Rudolph lived in the Bronx, police said.
It was not immediately clear why Chen attacked Rudolph or how police identified him.
Chen’s arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court was pending Friday. He has a criminal record and has been arrested twice, both for petit larceny, since August.
His last arrest was on Oct. 20 when cops busted him in Midtown for petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. He was released without bail the next day and was expected to answer the charges in court in December, according to court records.
Last month’s murder was the ninth this year in the city’s transit system, nearly double the five slayings in all of 2023. Ten people were murdered in the subway system in 2022.