Daniel Cho was on his way to pick up his credentials for his first New York City Marathon last October when, by his account, a stranger punched him in the face and knocked him onto the tracks at the Bowery J/Z station. The 46-year-old says the man shouted a racist slur at him before walking away, leaving Cho to climb back onto the platform and call 911 himself. A year later, Cho is finally running the race that violence almost took from him.
Cho, who works for the New York City Campaign Finance Board, gave police a detailed description of his attacker that helped officers catch the man quickly, according to his account relayed by Gothamist. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office later said the man, identified in court papers as Clive Porter, was indicted on charges stemming from five alleged anti-Asian attacks in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 29, 2025, plus an alleged attack on a police officer while he was under arrest, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors say Porter punched an Asian man on the platform at the Bowery subway station and that the victim heard him say, in substance, “f— Asian,” as he walked away.
Accounts differ on exactly how the Bowery victim ended up on the tracks. The DA’s Office said the victim leapt onto the tracks as Porter kicked him, while the New York Daily News reported that the man fell back onto the tracks after the alleged assault and later hoisted himself up to flag down police, according to the New York Daily News. Prosecutors say the victim was hospitalized with broken bones, including in his jaw and cheek, and that Porter was arrested near the station roughly 40 minutes later.
A Year of Surgery, Therapy and Slow Recovery
Cho says he sustained multiple fractures to his right cheekbone and nerve damage along his eye socket. He underwent surgery to install a titanium plate in his face, according to his account, and has continued receiving acupuncture treatments for persistent numbness. He also sought therapy to address lingering post-traumatic stress disorder, per the same account relayed by Gothamist.
Doctors told Cho to cancel his marathon bid just four days before last year’s race. He says he decided he was ready to run again in early spring. Cho has described the parallel between the two pursuits directly: marathon training and recovery from violence, he said, both require resilience, motivation and mental fortitude. He has advised other survivors to treat recovery like marathon training and to find their own healing journey, whatever form that takes.
The Charges Prosecutors Filed
The indictment against Porter includes two counts of assault in the second degree as a hate crime, a class C felony, among other charges, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The office noted that the charges remain allegations and that Porter is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Prosecutors allege Porter was involved in four other anti-Asian attacks that same day, a pattern Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office laid out in announcing the indictment.
The case lands amid a broader, uneven picture of hate crimes and transit safety in Manhattan. The DA’s office told the City Council that reported hate crimes in Manhattan fell 30% in 2025 compared with 2024, even as they remained 41% above 2019 levels, according to the office’s written testimony to the Public Safety Committee. The same testimony said the office brought 105 new hate-crime prosecutions in 2025, up from 101 the year before.
Running for Chinatown Youth on Marathon Sunday
Cho plans to run this year’s New York City Marathon to raise awareness about attacks like the one he survived, to spread hope to other survivors, and to reclaim his own sense of safety and community in the city. He intends to raise money through the race for Apex for Youth, a Manhattan Chinatown-based nonprofit that provides resources and mentorship to young Asian Americans from low-income backgrounds. He plans to look for his wife and two kids at mile 14 along the course.
He will join more than 18,000 first-time finishers expected in this year’s race. Cho has said he looked into the darkness of the subway tunnel after he was knocked down and decided he could figure out how to get through it — a moment he has since connected to the months of recovery that followed. New York, he has said, is a place for everyone, and the city belongs to all of them.
Citywide, serious physical assaults affected more than 29,800 people in New York City in 2025, according to the most recent NYPD data cited by Gothamist. Felony assaults in transit specifically rose 11% year over year, the same data showed, part of a longer-running concern about violence on the subway system that city officials have continued to track into 2026.
