The straphanger randomly shoved onto tracks by a muttering maniac Saturday is an ER pediatrician who was on his way home from work at the time — and is now just “happy he’s still alive,” his pal told The Post.
The 44-year-old victim was heading back to his Upper West Side pad after a shift at Harlem Hospital and waiting for a No. 1 train at the 50th Street and Seventh Avenue station in Manhattan around 7:50 p.m. when the nut came up behind him, according to cops and the friend, Takayuki Matsumoto.
“[The unhinged attacker] was screaming and walking toward him, and the next thing, [the victim] was pushed,” said Matsumoto, speaking to The Post at the home of the injured rider, who was inside sleeping while recovering, on Sunday.
“It’s not like he was walking on the edge of the platform or anything,” the man said of his doctor friend. “He was walking in the middle of it, and suddenly, this guy approached him and pushed him.
“His staff at the hospital said, ‘Don’t take the train anymore,’ ” Matsumoto added of his pal.
“He’s lucky he’s OK. He’s happy that he’s still alive.”
Matsumoto, 62, said the victim was aware at the time that there was a train coming into the station in under 4 minutes, so he scrambled back onto the platform quickly with help from “a nice couple and a lady.”
The doctor, whose name is being withheld by The Post, suffered bruises to his face and leg.
Cops are currently searching for the suspect, who was described as around 6 feet tall and wearing a white shirt, black shorts and a black backpack.
The attack was one of a slew of recent violent incidents on the rails.
Police also are looking for the man who stabbed another subway rider in the neck during a dispute at an East Village subway station Saturday night.
In addition, a masked stranger slashed a 29-year-old woman on a Lower Manhattan train late Wednesday when she refused to hand him her bag — and he is still in the wind, too.
The violence did not stop clueless MTA officials crowing Sunday that July marked the lowest subway violence month since 1995.
Saturday’s attack on the emergency-room doctor will unfortunately do little to deter him from riding the subway, his pal said.
“That’s the only way he can get to the hospital,” the friend said.
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