Angry subway rider beats MTA C train operator in Manhattan

A man angry about being woken up at his subway train’s last stop in upper Manhattan beat the NYC Transit train operator with a pipe, police said Tuesday.

The train operator took the C train out of service at the end of its line at the 168th St. station in Washington Heights about 11:45 p.m. Sunday, and asked lingering passengers to disembark.

A man who’d been sleeping on the train woke up, and started arguing with the train operator, cops said.

As the quarrel escalated, the sleepy rider also pulled a box cutter on the train’s conductor, according to a source with knowledge of the incident.

Within minutes, the man then brandished a pipe and attacked the train operator. He struck the MTA employee repeatedly in the face with the pipe before running out of the station, cops said.

Medics took the train operator to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, where he was treated and released.

A spokesman for Transport Workers Local 100, which represents the train operator, said he required 15 stitches and suffered two broken teeth.

Richard Davey, the president of NYC Transit, said Tuesday the victim is “shaken up but recovering.”

“These instances ― one is too many, and we have more than that — are outrageous,” Davey added. “Assaults, whether on conductors, bus operators, cleaners — it just has to stop.”

On Aug. 3, a career criminal with more than 100 arrests was arrested for randomly attacking a Manhattan MTA traffic checker. Suspect Kenneth Gore, 64, was sitting on a bench on the No. 4 train platform at the 59th St. station in Midtown just before 7 p.m. on Thursday when he suddenly kicked the 43-year-old woman in the lower back, cops said.

Davey noted that crime is down in the city’s subway system from last year, but said “one assault is too many.”

“This is something that keeps me up at night,” Davey said. “I’m obsessed with it — keeping our people safe.”

Local 100 President Richard Davis, said Tuesday that while subway crime was down for riders, it has risen for transit workers.

“Felony and misdemeanor assaults against us are up,” Davis said in a statement. “Spitting incidents — yes, people spit on transit workers regularly — are also up.”

According to the union, assaults against subway workers have risen 63% since this time last year.

“We are seeing more police officers in the subway system, which is a good thing,” Davis said. “But we’re also seeing the same people get arrested repeatedly, only to get released and come right back to the stations, trains and platforms, where they again are a threat.”

Cops on Tuesday released surveillance images of the suspect, who wore a gray sweatshirt and bucket hat, in the hopes someone recognizes him. He was carrying a silver suitcase as he fled the station, cops said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.