A social media influencer and singer says he was almost killed after a violent stabbing broke out in the subway car he was riding in early New Year’s Day.
TikToker Chris Olsen says he was on the subway with his friend when two men began shouting at each other, something he thought would be another ordinary verbal dispute on the New York City subway.
“We just witnessed basically a stabbing and almost died on the subway ourselves,” Olsen said in a video posted to TikTok on Jan. 1.
Olsen – who says he rides the subway “all the time” – wasn’t phased by the screaming match but his out-of-town friend Cara got “a little nervous” — still, he reassured her everything was fine.
Then, one of the unidentified straphangers pulled out “a really big knife” as the back-and-forth yelling continued.
Unaware of the impending danger, Olsen, Cara and the remainder of the passengers stayed seated in the subway car until the guy “behind” them rushed towards the other man.
“And every single person on the train gets up and starts running right at Cara and I because we’re near the end of the car,” he said in the video seen over 10 million times.
Olsen, who was positioned at the door to change cars, used his “adrenaline and untapped superhero strength” to rip the door open as the frantic crowd jumped over to the adjacent car.
The panicked group of straphangers rushed into the other car, causing those inside to start yelling at the commotion as they all raced to the other end to get to the next car in line.
“The door in front of that is completely locked, but all we can hear behind us is people screaming, we don’t know if someone has brought out a gun, we don’t know who else has been stabbed,” he added.
Olsen says he heard screaming in the background as the growing crowd had pushed the friends against a wall with no where to run.
One passenger pulled the emergency brake, stopping the train, and sat for what Olsen estimated to be 20 minutes.
A frustrated man allegedly yelled at his fellow riders to stop screaming and calm down “because it was just making it worse for everyone.”
A conductor eventually arrived in the car and opened the locked door, allowing the displaced passengers to enter the next car and sit down before the train moved to the next station.
Olsen, who boasts nearly 14 million followers on the app, wasn’t deterred from the New Year’s morning experience and was commuting on the train Thursday.
“Back on the subway to prevent a trauma response from forming,” he wrote on his Instagram story. “Shaking a bit but I survived!”
Olsen didn’t specify which train he was on, but several stabbings have plagued the NYC subway system in the fresh new year.
Two men stabbed each other when a fight broke out in a Hell’s Kitchen train just after 2 a.m. New Year’s Day, Fox 5 NY reported.
Later in the morning, two more men were stabbed in separate incidents. The first involved a 30-year-old who was knifed on the No. 1 train platform at 110th Street-Cathedral Parkway.
About 15 minutes later a 31-year-old man was stabbed in the back on board a northbound No. 2 train at the 14th Street station.
Both victims were taken to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries.