Man stabbed at Harlem's 125th Street subway station, even as transit crime drops

A man was injured in a stabbing on a Manhattan subway platform on Tuesday afternoon, just a few weeks after police reported the second murder of the year in the transit system.

NYPD officials said Tuesday’s incident happened just after 4 p.m. on the northbound platform of the A train at the 125th Street station near St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem.

Two men got into a verbal dispute on the train that escalated in the station, and a 36-year-old was stabbed multiple times throughout his body, police said. First responders took him to St. Luke’s Hospital in critical condition, but officials said he was later stabilized.

The NYPD arrested 58-year-old Victor Solis, an Inwood resident, in connection with the bloodshed. He was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon, and was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. Officers recovered the knife at the scene.

Police said it wasn’t immediately clear if the two men knew each other, or what the fight was about.

The incident came the same week Mayor Eric Adams, police and MTA officials were heralding overall drops in major crime, including on the subway system. In a statement Wednesday morning, MTA Chief Security Officer Michael Kemper said a 3.2% drop in transit crime compared to the first half of last year was “no accident and it’s not luck,” citing the tens of thousands of cameras in train cars and a stepped-up police presence.

But polls show that New Yorkers are still worried about riding the subways. Two men have been killed in the system so far this year, which transports about 4 million riders per week.

According to statistics the NYPD released this week, there were 1,058 major subway crimes in the first half of 2025 — the fewest recorded since 2010, except for the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.