Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:00 by GxMedia
A drunken homeless man — who cops say resembles Kriss Kringle — was charged Saturday with attempted murder for allegedly pushing an elderly stranger onto the subway tracks in Harlem.
It was on the St. Nicholas Avenue line that cops say Rudralall Baldeo, 57, randomly shoved the 72-year-old man, leaving him clinging to life Saturday night with a fractured skull.
“The guy looks like Santa Claus,” one law-enforcement source said of Baldeo, a Guyanese man who earns change collecting cans and bottles.
“He has a full head of white hair and a full white beard.”
“He looked bewildered,” the source added.
“He wasn’t drunk anymore. He had this, ‘What the f- -k did I do?’ face on him.”
Baldeo wore green scrubs and a slight smile as he was led out of the 30th Precinct station house to be booked and arraigned downtown on attempted-murder and assault raps.
He has no history of violence or psychiatric treatment, cops say, and his only arrest is sealed.
Meanwhile, the victim, Shou Kuan Lin, remained in intensive care at St. Luke’s Hospital Center.
Witnesses had jumped to the tracks to hoist him back onto the crowded northbound A and C platform before a train could arrive.
“The victim is in a lot of trouble, the swelling is not going down,” the source said, noting that doctors had drilled a hole in his skull to relieve pressure.
“The whole city needs to think about how to protect innocent bystanders,” the family’s pastor, Eliyah Shira, of the Church of Grace in Chinatown, said as he left the hospital.
Baldeo had been riding trains looking for recyclables Friday afternoon when he hopped off at 145th Street, allegedly mistaking it for 59th Street in his drunkenness.
He told cops at the 30th Precinct station that Lin fell accidentally and that he had said “excuse me,” to the victim right before.
But numerous witnesses insisted Baldeo inexplicably shoved Lin.
“Push! Push! Push!” Lin’s wife told arriving cops, pointing at Baldeo.
Random subway shovings by mentally disturbed have become almost routine in recent years.
Last December, homeless Erika Menendez allegedly shoved Sunando Sen, 46, to his death in front of a 7 train in Queens.
In December 2012, veteran burglar Naeem Davis allegedly shoved Ki Suk Han. 58, to his death in front of a Q train in Times Square.
Menendez and Davis have pleaded not guilty; their cases are pending.
