By The Associated Press

Published: Friday, December 28, 2012, 7:54 p.m.
Updated: Friday, December 28, 2012

NEW YORK — For New York City, it wasn't an unusual sight: a possibly mentally ill woman pacing and mumbling to herself on an elevated subway station platform.

The woman eventually took a seat on a bench on Thursday night, witnesses later said. Then, without any warning or provocation, she sprang up and used both hands to shove a man into the path of an oncoming train.

As police sought on Friday to locate the unidentified woman, Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged residents to keep the second fatal subway shove in the city this month in perspective. The news of the horrific death of a 46-year-old man from India came as the mayor touted drops in the city's annual homicide and shooting totals.

“It's a very tragic case, but what we want to focus on today is the overall safety in New York,” Bloomberg told reporters after a police academy graduation.

The New York Police Department released a sketch of the woman and surveillance video of her fleeing the area and interviewed witnesses, including some who described her as acting agitated before the attack.

Some witnesses said the man had been shielding himself from the cold by waiting in a stairwell before he ventured out onto the platform to see if the train was coming. They said he had no interaction with the woman, who immediately darted down a stairway after she pushed him.

Investigators identified the victim, who lived alone in Queens, through a smartphone and a prescription pill bottle he was carrying. They delayed releasing his name while they worked to notify his relatives in India.

Detectives were following leads from the public generated by the video and were checking homeless shelters and psychiatric units in a bid to identify the woman, described as Hispanic, heavyset, about 5-foot-5 and in her 20s.

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