A Manhattan grand jury today indicted veteran burglar Naeem Davis in the subway-push murder of a Queens dad.
Davis, a 30-year-old Sierra Leone refugee, has been charged with intentionally killing Ki Suk Han, 58, by shoving the older man off a Times Square subway platform during an argument — just as a Q train barreled into the station two weeks ago.
Davis was informed of the indictment at a brief court hearing this afternoon, during which Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jackson ordered he continue to be held without bail and set January 15 as the court date on which his charges will be read aloud to him.
“Tell him we love him,” one in a group of a dozen Times Square sidewalk vendors told reporters after attending the hearing, giving his name as “Amir.” Davis has a long rap sheet of burglaries from Pennsylvania, plus some eight prior arrests in New York, but also made money by helping vendors drag their tables to and from local garages.
“The Naeem I know isn’t capable of this,” said another friend, Mohamed Cayol, 22 of Manhattan, as others in the group agreed.
Davis has admitted shoving Han, but has insisted to cops that the Korean immigrant — an unemployed Laundromat worker from Elmhurst — had been harassing him. Han’s wife has told reporters that her husband was “drunk” and angry after an argument when he headed into Manhattan.
Onlookers had watched horrified as Han was literally launched airborne onto the tracks by the violent shove, and as he tried to scramble back onto the platform. Among them, cops say, was Davis himself, who cops say admitted he “stayed and watched” as the train plowed into the struggling man, then calmly picked his coffee up from the ground and left the station.