83-year-old US Air Force veteran and grandfather Richard Williams died from injuries after being randomly shoved onto NYC subway tracks at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station on March 8 by Honduran national Bairon Hernandez, 34. John Pena, 30, was also pushed but heroically helped pull Williams back onto the platform before a train arrived.
Hernandez, described as a “serial criminal” by DHS with 15+ charges, including aggravated assault, weapons possession, and domestic violence, and deported four times, was arrested on March 10. Charges were upgraded to murder after the medical examiner ruled Williams’ death a homicide; prosecutors had called him “brain-dead.” Hernandez is next in court on March 30.
Reacting to the brutal assault on her father, Debbie Williams described the heroic actions of Pena, explaining, “He helped my dad get out of there. The first guy that got pushed is the guy who assisted my father off the tracks with everybody else. What can you say about New Yorkers?”
“My father is not doing well at all. There is no change — It does not look promising,” she added, “He was out shopping. He was out, going on the subway. He’s fully independent. He battled cancer, he got through that…. He was living his best life and then this had to happen. I can’t imagine why anybody would consider pushing a person. It’s beyond me.”
“The only reason I’m talking to anybody is because I just want the right thing to be done by this man. I want to draw attention. This is everybody’s father. This is everybody’s grandfather now,” she said in another interview on the subject.
“My father is an awesome, giving man. He was enjoying his best life on Roosevelt Island. Going to the city independently at 83 years old, doing whatever he wanted to do,” the loving daughter asserted, while slamming the perpetrator: “There are no words. How do you talk to the devil? He’s the devil.”
She also heaped general praise on the residents of New York, while criticizing the savage attacker. “They’re phenomenal. Until that son of a bitch that came over here and just decided to start tearing up the subway. There are no words to say how I feel about him,” she declared.
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Likewise, Diane Williams, another one of Richard’s children, said, “I have no idea how she is going to survive this. Right now, she is just lost. She is completely lost. She keeps talking to my dad and telling him, ‘C’mon, wake up. Wake up, sweetheart.’ She can’t digest this.”
Describing her wishes for the alleged murderer, Diane barked, “I think he should suffer like the rest of us are suffering. He just randomly did it, just push people off the f–king subway tracks. I hope he lives with his conscience. I want him to live and live with the consequences he did.”
Claudia Pena, mother of the heroic John Pena, offered an insight into her son’s condition. “It’s terrible, it’s hit him very hard. He tells me it was very distressing getting [Williams] out of there and not doing anything more for him,” she stated.