Naeem Davis, the homeless man charged with fatally shoving a Queens father into the path of an oncoming subway train last week, claims that it was voices inside his head that made him do it.
“I heard, ‘Naeem he’s coming again. He’s coming again. You got to do something.’ I kept hearing voices like that,” he told The New York Post of his alleged victim, Ki Suk Han, in an interview from Rikers Island.
“From the depths of my heart, I didn’t mean to kill him.”
The jailhouse confession came on the same day as a press conference by Han’s family, where they said they remained by the fact that nobody bothered to help him get up off the tracks.
“What’s done is done I don’t want to dwell on what happened, but the thought of somebody helping him up in a matter of seconds…it would have been so great,” said Han’s 20-year-old daughter, Ashley, according to the Daily Mail.
“I just really wish I had one last chance to tell my dad how much I loved him.”
Davis, 30, said he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his 20s, but wasn’t taking any medication to treat his condition and was high on marijuana when the 58-year-old Han was killed.
“I was under the influence,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention to kill him. I just wanted him to get away from me.”
Davis, who was staying at a Bronx shelter on 136th Street, was headed to W. 28th Street to pick up some merchandise to peddle in Midtown.
Davis said an intoxicated Han first approached him near the 49th Street subway booth at 11:30 a.m. and threatened him.
“He grabbed my arm. He said, ‘I’m gonna kill you,’” he said. “I yelled at him, “I don’t know you. Get away from me.”
Han badgered him, he said, and approached him near the turnstile and on the platform, where things got really heated.
“I took out off my jacket and put down my coffee cup,” Davis said. “I saw a red cap (inside his pocket) and I didn’t know what he was going to do. I didn’t see a bottle. I fought back in self-defense. I was against the wall when I pushed him. He fell on his ass and then rolled.
“I was under the influence, that’s why I didn’t help,” he said.
Davis said there were five other men on the platform, but nobody intervened.
“I had my back to him,” he said. “Even if I grabbed both his arms, the train still would’ve clipped him. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react.”
Davis, who described himself as a “good hearted person,” coldly watched the train hit Han and walked away after hearing his body snap.
“I saw the train hit him,” he said. “I heard his bones crack.”
Davis said he later turned himself into police because he “had no choice.”
Now he hopes to make a plea deal to avoid serving a longer sentence. He hopes to get 7 1/2 years to life while pleading guilty to manslaughter.
He also wants to apologize to the victim’s wife, albeit for selfish reasons.
“I just want to see her face-to-face and say, ‘I’m sorry,’” he said. “It would make things easier for me in here.”
His family buried Han on Friday.
Davis said he is a devout Muslim who prays five times a day and goes to mosque daily.
“I’ve been praying every hour,” he said. “God was testing me. I failed that test.”
