A 61-year-old family man standing with his wife on a Bronx subway platform Sunday was pushed to his death in front of a train by a madman who attacked without warning, cops said.
A manhunt was on for the stocky stranger who without any apparent provocation shoved Wai Kuen Kwok into the path of a southbound D train in Highbridge as the victim’s wife watched in horror.
Kwok’s distraught wife told investigators the sickening 8:45 a.m. attack came out of the blue, saying there was no interaction between her husband and the man before the deadly push.
Police were handling the case as a random act of violence.
The train’s motorman saw Kwok tumble off the platform as he pulled into the 167th St. station, but he couldn’t stop in time, a transit source said.
“He said the guy just flew off the platform in front of his train as he was entering the station. The guy was still in the air when he hit him,” the source said.
Three cars rolled over Kwok before the train stopped, according to the source.
The killer bolted from the station, jumping on a Bx35 bus and taking it three stops to Edward L. Grant Highway and Jesup Ave., a police source said.
Detectives released video surveillance Sunday night showing the suspect — a heavy-set, balding man — getting off the bus. He was wearing dark jeans, white sneakers and a black leather jacket over a black T-shirt with white lettering. The footage captured him going in and out of a deli, and smoking a cigarette as he casually walked down the street.
Kwok’s 59-year-old wife, Yow Ho Lee, was treated at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital for emotional trauma, sources said.
The Bronx couple was on the way to have breakfast and do grocery shopping in Chinatown when the terror unfolded.
“Please tell the world he is a fine, family man,” Kwok’s son, Gary, 29, a doctoral student at Adelphi University, told The New York Times.
Family members met with investigators at the victim’s Findlay Ave. home, confounded over why the father of two adult sons was targeted.
Kwok worked for a kitchen supply company, relatives said.
“He’s a good man,” a relative said at the home, just several blocks from the subway station. “He was a very good provider for the family.”
He said the family was trying to make sense of the senseless attack. “We’re hanging in there,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can.”
Kwok’s neighbor Wenfeng Wu, 25, said his mother, Yan Lian Liang, 49, was on the train that hit Kwok. “She told me . . . she was coming home from work and all of a sudden the train stopped and she heard some weird sound,” Wu said of his mother, a home health care worker. “When she got off the train, she was hearing screams from the subway station.”
He said his mom didn’t learn until later who the victim was. “She was really shocked,” he said. Wu said Kwok and his family have lived in their apartment building for eight years. He said the couple has one son in college and another who works as an auto mechanic.
Neighbor Pedro Ramos, 73, said Kwok and his wife, a home health care worker, were always together. “He was a very nice person — and his wife. She’s very friendly,” Ramos said.
With Joseph Stepansky and Rocco Parascandola
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