By Zoe Hussain, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon and Joe Marino
It’s every New Yorker’s worst nightmare.
A Big Apple straphanger was shoved onto Manhattan subway tracks and struck by an incoming 1 train in a cowardly attack Tuesday — miraculously surviving the horrifying caught-on-video ordeal.
In what cops are calling a random attack, an unidentified 45-year-old man was at the 18th Street station shortly after 1:30 p.m. Tuesday when the hooded thug pushed him onto the tracks.
Incredibly, the victim survived the harrowing assault with just a head injury — while cops are now grilling a person of interest in the cowardly afternoon attack.
“By God’s own hand, he fell perfectly in the trench,” one law enforcement source said of the victim.
He was listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital Tuesday night.
Chilling video footage obtained by The Post shows the cowardly brute roaming the edge of the platform while the victim appears to be looking at his phone as the train pulls into the station.
Without warning the suspect pushes the man onto the tracks, with the unsuspecting straphanger disappearing under the train.
Two others are seen jumping the turnstile seconds before the attack — then rushing out of the station and off camera after they witness the nightmare scenario on New Year’s Eve.
It does not appear the victim knew his attacker, cops said.
“The subway stopped abruptly, then we waited for 10 minutes, confused,” said Violet Paley, who was on the train.
“Then the conductor said over the intercom that we were going to have to evacuate because there was a man under the train,” Paley said. “We walked off the subway, there were a bunch of cops and paramedics and they climbed down to get him.
“When they got him out I was shocked to see him blinking his eyes and moving his fingers. He was bloody.”
Dramatic video footage from the scene shows firefighters working to pull the injured man from between subway cars as bystanders gawk at the scene on the station platform. One relieved bystander is heard shouting “He’s alive! He’s alive!”
The suspect, 23, fled the station but was busted above ground near Columbus Circle hours later, cops said.
The creep, whose name is being withheld because he has not been charged, has had several run-ins with the NYPD in the past — including for allegedly assaulting one of New York’s Finest.
According to the sources, the shoving suspect was charged with assault in June 2019 after slamming a cop to the ground on Flushing Avenue when the officer spotted him acting disorderly, leaving the cop with a back injury.
He also has an open case in Brooklyn on assault, harassment and weapons possession charges for an incident on Oct. 12.
Sources said he was released without bail in another case in 2020 despite prosecutors asking he be held. It is unclear what the charges were in that case.
Tuesday’s incident is the latest in a series of transit attacks in the Big Apple, including two slashings on Sunday and the horrific Dec. 22 torching death of a sleeping straphanger on an F train in Brooklyn.
Straphangers like Kips Bay resident Tom, who was standing outside of the 18th Street Station as police investigated the shoving, now find themselves more wary of riding the subways.
“My rule of thumb is to always avoid late-night traveling. But to hear this happened in the daytime is scary,” he said. “I’m surprised, I guess, but I’m hearing things like this happen more often.”
NYPD stats show that in the 28 days leading up to Sunday, there were 48 felony assaults in the city transit system, making for a 40% bump over the same period in 2023.
The jump in violence prompted the Guardian Angels to begin patrolling the subways for the first time since 2020.
The group, founded by former mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa in 1979, began the patrols on Sunday and said three-member Angel teams will patrol troublesome subway lines around the clock.
Mayor Eric Adams called the announcement “theatrics” and decried what he called “meaningless stunts.”
A City Hall rep said Adams “surged” 1,000 cops a day to police the subways, bringing down overall crime.
Concerns over subway violence have also led to Gov. Kathy Hochul deploying more than 1,000 National Guardsmen into the transit system.