A Muslim-hating woman was charged with murder as a hate crime for senselessly shoving a Queens man to his death in front of the 7 train, officials said today.
Erika Menendez, 31, was hit with a second-degree murder charge after confessing to killing Sunando Sen, 46, following her arrest this morning.
“She is accused of committing a subway commuter’s worst nightmare," Queens DA Richard Brown said. "(He was) suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train, shoved from behind with no chance to defend himself.
Push victim Sunando Sen
The sketch the police used to bust Muslim-hater Erika Menendez.
“She told police that she pushed a Muslim off the train tracks. She said, ‘I’ve hated Hindus and Muslims since 2001 since they put down the Twin Towers. I have been beating them up since.'”
Cops picked up Menendez in Brooklyn early this morning after spotting her wearing the same jacket seen in surveillance video the night that Sen was fatally shoved into the path of the 7 train at the elevated 40th Street-Lowery stop in Sunnyside, law-enforcement sources said.
Menendez was grabbed around 5 a.m. on the corner of Empire Boulevard and Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, the sources said.
The incoherent suspect was mumbling as cops questioned her, and at one point asked where the R train was, the sources added.
Her relatives called cops last night after seeing her on the news, law-enforcement sources said.
Menendez could have a criminal background -- and possibly a history of mental health issues, the sources said. She has recently been living in homeless shelters.
The suspect was taken to the 112th Precinct in Forest Hills.
She looked wild as she was later escorted from the Queens precinct.
She wailed incoherently, contorted her face into what looked like a fiendish grin, and struggled as officers forced her into an unmarked car.
"All I know is that she's bipolar and as far as seeing the footage, I'm pretty sure it was her," said a cousin of the suspect who declined to give his name. "I don't know much about her whereabouts or what she's been up to these past few months."
Sen, an Indian immigrant from Calcutta who co-owned a Manhattan print shop, was waiting for the train around 8 pm on Thursday when a woman came behind him and shoved him onto the tracks, cops said.
The deranged pusher was seen mumbling to herself on the platform, and said nothing as she approached her victim from behind, witnesses told cops.
Sen's death marked the second fatal subway pushing this month after Ki Suk Han was allegedly shoved to his death by crazed drifter Naeem Davis.
The deaths drove fearful straphangers to hang back from the edge of subway platforms yesterday.
