Subway surveillance video showing Jose Rojas. (
)
A man accused of pushing a fashion exec onto the subway tracks was found not guilty today by a Manhattan jury of attempted murder, but guilty of first degree assault.
That’s not much a break for Jose Rojas, 26, because both charges carry the same penalty, meaning he’ll still be facing between 5 and 25 years behind bars when he’s sentenced on March 16.
Rojas had insisted that he did not cause a tall, blonde woman, Ute Linhart, to hit the train intentionally.
Instead, he claimed he was stumbling drunk, his lawyers argued — and may have stumbled or tripped on the narrow platform, accidentally pushing her into the train.
The judge had told jurors earlier in the week that intoxication is not a defense, but that they can consider it when weighing whether prosecutors proved every element of the charge — including whether Rojas was acting intentionally.
Linhart is a statuesque native of Germany in her early 40s, and she has no doubt that she was pushed intentionally in August 2010.
During the trial, she had even taken the stand herself last week to tell jurors that she distinctly felt two hands on her back, shoving her forcefully into the oncoming train.
The shove was so forceful, she flew off her feet and into the front right corner of the rushing train, she told jurors.
Linhart, who is creative director for a company that makes T-shirts and other music-related merchandising, said the impact cracked her cheek bone and jaw, and caused further breaks in her shoulder and forearm, along with several broken teeth and eight broken ribs.
Jurors had also asked to hear a readback of emergency medical technician testimony detailing how even at the scene, moments after her horrible injuries, Linhart was insisting she had felt two hands shoving her toward the train.
Rojas, a cook at Cipriani’s on West Broadway at the time, was arrested immediately after the incident and his blood tested at around twice the legal driving limit for alcohol.
What happened between Rojas and Linhart — two utter strangers before that day — was not captured on surveillance video or seen by eyewitnesses. But witnesses had testified that Rojas was wandering the platform glaring at people moments beforehand.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said, “The victim endured every New Yorker’s nightmare.”
“She was attacked on a crowded subway platform and shoved into an oncoming train. The defendant’s actions caused the victim to suffer life-long injuries and nearly caused her death,” Vance said.
Rojas’s lawyer, Steven Ross, said he and his client were “disappointed” in the verdict, but grateful that he wasn’t convicted of attempted murder.
“This was not an intentional act. This was an unfortunate accident,” Ross said.