A mentally ill woman charged with pushing a pair of Mexican tourists off the platform and onto the tracks at a Lower East Side subway station has been trying for years to get help for her illness but keeps getting turned away, her family said on Monday.
Ebony Butts, 42, who was charged with reckless endangerment and misdemeanor assault after the frightening, unprovoked early Monday morning attack, has been in and out of hospitals, mental institutions and shelters for half her life, relatives said.
The victims suffered only minor injuries, but Butts’ sisters acknowledged that the end result could have been much worse, and said that Butts’ condition was a tragedy waiting to happen.
“My sister needs help,” said Tueniesha Butts, 47, the suspect’s sister, who lives in Maryland. “It shouldn’t take for a time where she’s hurting somebody for them to see that she needs help. And they put her in jail, but jail is not where she belongs. If somebody has mental health issues, the government and this country have enough money to help these people with mental disabilities before they go out and harm a citizen going to work, or going to school, especially when their family is speaking up trying to get them help. It’s falling on deaf ears and it’s not fair that you sit her in jail when that’s not the place she needs to be.”
New York City has seen a spate of random attacks in the subway system in recent months, many of them by emotionally disturbed people, according to police. In June, a mentally disturbed man went on a bloody slashing spree at Queens Plaza subway station in Long Island City, injuring three men with a straight-edge razor, police said.
In Monday’s incident, cops said Butts attacked two women ages 27 and 28, who were waiting for an uptown F train at the Delancey St.-Essex St. station shortly after 2:15 a.m.
Police said the stranger pushed the older tourist onto the tracks about 2:15 a.m. When her friend tried to help the tourist back to the platform, the attacker shoved that woman onto the tracks as well, cops said.
Fellow straphangers then helped both victims to the platform while cops who were patrolling the station ran over and arrested the attacker. There was no train coming into the station at the time.
Medics took the victims to Bellevue Hospital with minor injuries. Butts, who lives in Brooklyn, was taken to the same hospital for a mental health evaluation.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber condemned the violence Monday. “This was a couple of tourists,” Lieber told reporters. “All us New Yorkers know that that hurts us a little bit, when tourists have these terrible experiences.”
“I am thrilled that these cops were there right away,” he added. “That’s the key.”
Butts’ sister said she felt bad for the victims.
“I hope that they can forgive my sister,” Tueniesha said. “It’s a mental illness. It’s not something she would normally do if she was in the right state of mind. “My family and I pray for theirs, and I hope they can forgive her.”
Tueniesha said her sister, who has also had to deal with breast cancer and related surgery, has been troubled for nearly two decades.
“I’m very worried for her,” she said. “For like 20 years, I’ve been back and forth trying to get her help. She’s been on medication. I brought her to Maryland trying to take care of her. She’s diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, manic, and all of this and nobody acts like they wanted to help me.
“All I wanted was to get somebody to help me with her, a home health aide because I work. Somebody to look after her because I have kids of my own. I couldn’t get that.”
She said her sister has been on the other end of abuse.
“She got beat up real bad one time,” Tueniesha said. “On the streets somebody did this. She was on the ground. I called the ambulance and they said, as long as she knows what today’s date is, she’s OK. They say she’s grown. As long as she knows today’s date and the year, she’s OK.”
She said Butts needs a place to stay with a professional staff to care for her.
“She needs a place where she can live, where she can have visitation and can go outside with supervision until she gets better.”
She said her sister has been arrested before, but she could not recall the details.
“I’ve never seen my sister be violent,” she said. “I really wanted to bring her back before something happened to her. I didn’t want to get the word that she’s dead.”
She said Butts emotional issues began as a young adult in New York City, but that her childhood was difficult. At age 5, she lost both parents to AIDS. Tueniesha had the same mother but different fathers.
“We were put in foster homes, group homes. We were split up,” the sister said. ”So she is dealing with a lot.”
She said the signs of sickness were obvious.
“We noticed her becoming sick after she had her first daughter,” the sister said. “She used to do stuff like go in the train station and have the baby just standing there. That’s when me and my sister decided to put her in the hospital.”
Tueniesha said she still remembers the way her sister was before her downfall.
“Ebony was the type [who] you couldn’t catch her outside with the same outfit on,” the sister said. “She was into her looks. She was into poetry. She liked to write music. She liked to hang out with her friends.”
Clarence Butts, the suspect’s stepfather, said the family has struggled with her.
“She’s got problems and it seems like nobody can get her help,” he said. “They had her in a place for a long time but they let her back out and she started up again. And every time we call the police, try to get her help, they’ll take her for a minute then she’s back out on the streets. She needs eyes on her 24/7.”
Lieber said his agency remained committed to an expansion of the MTA Police Department’s “SCOUT” teams, which pair law enforcement officers with clinicians to get mentally ill New Yorkers in the subway system into treatment — involuntarily if necessary.
Gov. Hochul announced $20 million in March to expand the program.
Lieber also said Monday that straphangers could expect to see more of the static yellow platform barriers the MTA began testing earlier this year.
“We’re going to be doing those in many more stations as fast as we can,” Lieber said.
Landing on the tracks is a passenger’s worst nightmare.
On March 9, Christian Valdez, a homeless parolee, shoved his girlfriend into the path of a Manhattan subway train —which severed her legs near her knees. He told police he attacked the woman during an argument, prosecutors said.
Valdez made headlines in 2017 when he was charged with stabbing a woman and her 3-year-old daughter and then threatening to toss the girl off a Bronx fire escape.
“Christian has schizophrenia, and he needs special help. He needs mental health help,” said his niece, who spoke on condition that her name not be used.
Carlton Mcpherson, 24, is facing murder charges for a random attack at the 125th St. No. 4 station, resulting in the death of Jason Volz, 54 on March 25.
The suspect, a Bronx resident, was out on bail after he assaulted a man with a cane in Brooklyn on Halloween, cops and court papers say.
Mcpherson was on the uptown platform when he allegedly shoved Volz onto the tracks. A moment later, a No. 4 train rumbled into the station, fatally striking the victim.
Cops found Volz under a train car. He died at the scene of severe injuries to his face and body.
Mcpherson has been arrested multiple times and is believed to be emotionally disturbed. The NYPD responded to at least one prior incident in which he was acting erratically, according to police sources.
Mcpherson is due back in court in September.
Other subway attacks have put riders on edge.
On June 22, an emotionally disturbed man pulled out a straight-edge razor and randomly slashed a 45-year-old straphanger in his left ear and arm at about 8:20 a.m. on a Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer station bound E train to begin his spree, police said.
The slasher got off the train at the Queens Plaza subway station in Long Island City and went to the street where he struck again, slicing a 23-year-old man in the left side of his face, and a 32-year-old man across the right side of his face on 27th St. near 43rd Ave., cops said.
Waheed Foster, 41, was sentenced in June to 22 years in prison for following and attacking Elizabeth Gomes, 33, on Sept. 20, 2022, as she got off a train at the Howard Beach/JFK Airport subway station.
The brutal assault left Gomes with severe injuries, including the loss of her right eye. Foster had a long mental health history, which includes diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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