NYPD releases Grand Central subway footage of fatal knife confrontation

Body-worn camera footage released by New York City police shows two detectives confronting Anthony Griffin as he climbed a stairwell at the 42nd Street-Grand Central subway station with a large knife, then backing away and moving toward officers again before they opened fire. The video gives the clearest public look yet at the split seconds that turned a late-morning transit encounter into a fatal shooting.

Police said the confrontation followed a knife attack at about 9:40 a.m. on April 11, when Griffin, 44, stabbed three people on two subway platforms at Grand Central. The victims were an 84-year-old man on the 7 line platform, a 70-year-old woman on the 4, 5 and 6 platform, and a 65-year-old man who suffered lacerations and an open skull fracture. Griffin was later pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital after officers performed CPR at the scene.

The officers in the footage were detectives Ryan Giuffre and Anthony Manetta, working an overtime Transit Bureau detail. As they approached Griffin, they repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon. Giuffre can be heard telling him, “Nobody wants to hurt you.” Griffin retreated down the stairs, then started moving back toward the detectives with the knife still raised over his head, and the officers fired.

That sequence matters because Grand Central is one of the city’s busiest transit hubs, a place where a police shooting carries immediate questions about force, timing and bystander safety. The footage clarifies that the detectives did not fire the moment they saw Griffin; it also shows how quickly a crowded station can collapse into a life-or-death confrontation when an armed suspect continues moving toward officers.

The release also fits a broader shift in city policy. In March, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department had formally codified its practice of releasing body-camera footage within 30 calendar days of a critical incident. The timing puts this case squarely inside a new transparency framework, even as the shooting raises unresolved questions about de-escalation in tight transit spaces and whether the officers’ response will be judged consistent with NYPD standards.

Local reports said Griffin had three prior arrests and that he was acting erratically, calling himself “Lucifer” and, in some accounts, shouting “Shoot me” during the confrontation. What the video does not settle is whether there was any safer path once Griffin advanced back toward the officers at Grand Central, where a fast-moving threat on a platform can endanger riders, commuters and police at once.