CLEAR THINKING: Jailed schizophrenic Andrew Goldstein, who pushed Kendra Webdale (inset) to her death in 1999, blasts legal loopholes that allow sick people like him on the streets unmonitored. (
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FALLSBURG, NY — The schizophrenic who shoved Kendra Webdale to her death in front of a subway train in 1999 expressed outrage yesterday that riders are still being murdered on the tracks — and lamented that the law created to keep people like him off the streets lacks any teeth.
“There should be stricter regulations,” infamous subway pusher Andrew Goldstein, 41, told The Post in his first-ever interview since the crime that shocked New York City nearly 14 years ago.
“They need to restructure Kendra’s Law.”
“Should you let a mental patient like myself be in freedom so an incident like train-pushing can occur? If you are a harm to anyone, even yourself, you should be hospitalized,” said Goldstein, who is now lucid because he’s forced to take his medication.
“The court has the right to hospitalize and medicate. Each and every homicide is a horrible thing.”
Goldstein, pudgy, balding and dressed in a green prison jumpsuit, spoke extensively at his detention center, the Sullivan Correctional Institute, just hours after learning that a Queens man had been pushed to his death in front of a 7 train — the second deadly train-shoving incident this month.
“When I heard on the radio that someone else was pushed, I couldn’t believe it happened again,” he said. “They’re so soon, back to back.”
In 2006, Goldstein pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 23 years behind bars for shoving Webdale, a 32-year-old photographer and aspiring screenwriter, in front of an oncoming N train on the 23rd Street platform on Jan. 3, 1999.
Webdale’s murder spurred her mother, Patricia, to lobby lawmakers to pass the landmark mental-health law that bears Kendra’s name.
But the 1999 law, which is supposed to allow courts to forcibly administer treatment to the dangerously disturbed, must be renewed every five years.
And loopholes in the law have allowed unmedicated, mentally ill people to remain on the streets.
Mentally ill prisoners are discharged without alerting local mental-health officials, who could evaluate whether the prisoners may need continued, mandatory treatment.
And individuals who are involuntarily committed to inpatient treatment as a “danger” can also be released without alerting mental-health authorities.
Additionally, court orders are allowed to expire without a review of whether they should be renewed, and if a person under a court order moves to a different county, the new county isn’t informed.
The loopholes have sparked a growing call for permanent, tighter legislation.
Even Goldstein now says it was a blessing that he was locked up and forced to take his medication.
“Because of what I did, there is a law. My name is in thousands of history books,” he said. “Mental patients need to be supervised.”
Goldstein. who was diagnosed as schizophrenic as a teen but had gone on and off his medication, still recalls the mental demons that caused him to kill Webdale.
“I remember the push on her shoulders,” he said. “I’m walking to the train. I see the train coming. I see a shimmering on the right of me. I put my hands up. It was an out-of-body thing.
“It was the same sensation I got each and every time I got violent — the urge to hit, kick, push. I’m trying to outwalk my urge.
“I was behind Kendra as the train came. I pushed her. It was like with a voodoo doll, how you can control them. I was trying to hold myself back.
“I never ran from the scene,” he recalled.
“I sat down in a kneeling position and said, ‘Take me to the hospital. I had a psychotic attack. I killed a person.’ ”