Brother of accused NYC subway shover blames city for fatal attack — ‘failed’ him and other mentally ill people
The family of a troubled Bronx man charged with shoving an innocent straphanger to his death at an East Harlem subway station had repeatedly tried to get him psychiatric help — to no avail, his brother told The Post on Tuesday.
Carlton McPherson, 24, was booted from a Big Apple hospital just two weeks before police say he randomly pushed 54-year-old Jason Volz into the path of a No. 4 train at the East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue station shortly before 7 p.m. Monday.
“The city failed Carlton,” his older brother, Daquan McPherson, said in an exclusive interview. “The city is failing all mentally ill people. There’s too much red tape. He just got out of the hospital two weeks ago. We begged them to keep him but they said he wasn’t a threat to himself or others so they couldn’t keep him and they let him go.
“They released him,” he said. “In New York City the mentally ill have two options — either they go to jail or do something that lands them in the newspaper.”
Repeated calls to a suicide and crisis hotline over the last six months also failed to get Carlton McPherson off the streets, his brother said.
McPherson — now facing murder charges — has a history of arrests and extreme emotional disturbances, according to law-enforcement sources, and was a known menace at the Bronx apartment building where he lived with his overwhelmed grandmother.
Neighbors said McPherson would often pace the hallway, and would repeatedly get shut out by his grandmother, forcing him to sleep on the roof or in a hallway closet in the building.
“Carlton suffers from severe mental illness,” his brother said. “He gets to these places where he’s incoherent. Carlton would sit in a dark room with no TV, with a hood on. That’s not the behavior of a mentally healthy person.
“Once he jumped off a roof because he thought people were chasing him,” Daquan McPherson said. “I tried my best to get help for Carlton. I literally called 988 [crisis hotline] multiple times in the last six months. I literally begged them.”
But the pleas fell on deaf ears, he said.
When Carlton was arrested in the past he would be held for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation, but then released back into the streets, Daquan said.
He said his troubled brother’s downward spiral began when their father died in 2021, and went further out of control in more recent years after their grandfather died of COVID.
“My father was trying to get some help for him,” Daquan McPherson said. “That’s when it went another way for Carlton. My father’s passing left the rest of the kids to try and help Carlton.
“My grandmother is old and she doesn’t leave the house, so there’s not much she can do,” he said. “My grandfather was good with him but he passed during COVID.”
He said his kid brother isn’t a criminal at heart — just a troubled soul who never got help.
Daquan McPherson also offered his “deepest condolences” to Volz’s family.
“Carlton did not choose the wrong path nor was he a career criminal,” he said. “He was raised in a church surrounded by love. But, unfortunately, he was sick and did not get the help he needed in time.”
The accused killer was held without bail following an arraignment at Manhattan criminal court Tuesday night.
He was visibly disoriented during the hearing and made unintelligible noises at one point, interrupting the proceeding.
A family member leaving the courthouse asked for privacy and said they “are sending our condolences to the deceased’s family — our prayers are with his family.”
Carlton is due back in court on Friday.
Additional reporting by Joe Marino.
