The 66-year-old Brooklyn man who was shoved onto subway tracks by a homeless stranger with a lengthy rap sheet slammed the city for failing to protect train riders — and called for more police on the transit system.
“This is ridiculous!” said Pierre Augustin, who narrowly escaped death after being pushed from the platform at the President Street station in Crown Heights during the unprovoked Saturday afternoon attack.
“I can tell you, the subway station — there is no one here to help you,” Augustin told The Post on Wednesday. “When you get there, you are on your own. No police, nothing! In New York, they don’t protect you.”
Augustin, a father of two originally from Haiti, also questioned why his accused attacker, Corey Walcott, was allowed to walk the streets after being arrested at least 19 times in the last 12 years, according to police sources.
“When they have a person [arrested] many times like that … that’s a problem!” Augustin said, adding that he’s “going to war against the city for that” and might sue over the incident.
“I’m not going to the city to make money,” he said. “But I want the city to change these things.”
Walcott, 44, has a long rap sheet that dates back to at least February 2011, when cops busted him for criminal possession of a weapon, police sources said. His crime spree continued over the next decade, earning him arrests for drug possession, assault, tampering with evidence, criminal sale of marijuana and assault with intent to injure, among other things.
Walcott was also arrested for forcible touching in July 2018 and October 2022, according to the NYPD.
In the latter incident, Walcott allegedly grabbed a 61-year-old woman’s privates over her clothes as she walked down the stairs at the West Fourth Street-Washington Square subway station on Oct. 3, 2022, at around 9 p.m., according to the criminal complaint against him.
The woman saw him in the station the next day and photographed him, the complaint states.
Walcott was charged with third-degree sexual abuse and two counts of forcible touching, all misdemeanors. But he failed to show up to a later court date and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest on Dec. 12, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
The nature of the charges shocked Augustin, who moved to Brooklyn in 1995.
“You don’t have 19 arrests … and you touch people, you push people, and you’re still in the streets!” he said.
Walcott allegedly attacked Augustin at about 3 p.m. Saturday while the older man waited for the 2 train at the President Street station in Crown Heights, according to police.
Augustin told The Post that Walcott — whom he had never seen before — said he was going to kill him just as he stepped onto the platform.
“I saw him try to put his hand in his coat,” Augustin said. “I said, ‘Why you want to kill me? I don’t have any problem with you. I thought he had a gun or a knife … I didn’t want him to touch me.”
Augustin said he ran when the stranger came after him. But Walcott allegedly caught up and pushed him from behind until he fell onto the tracks.
Two good Samaritans saved Augustin by calling the police and helping him off the tracks, he said.
But the incident has left the business owner shaken and hurt.
“My body’s killing me,” Augustin said. “I cannot stand up without someone helping me.”
Transit detectives later identified Walcott as the suspect and arrested him in Manhattan at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said Tuesday.
He faces charges of second-degree attempted murder, attempted assault, reckless endangerment, menacing and harassment, court documents state.
In a statement to police following his arrest, Walcott seemed to deny the allegations.
“That’s not me running down and chasing that dude,” Walcott told cops, according to court documents. “I was drunk as hell, I can’t even remember. I don’t think it was me touching that dude … I didn’t touch nobody. I know I was intoxicated but I didn’t push nobody.”
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