A Columbia University graduate student is fighting for his life with mysterious head injuries after what his family believes was a vicious attack on the subway.
Acting student Jay Reist, 29, is sedated and hooked up to a ventilator a week after he started suffering seizures in the back of an Uber and was rushed to the hospital with head trauma, reports and sources said.
“I think that Jay was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” mom Louise Reist told NBC 4 New York as she remained at her son’s beside at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights. “There is just an angry person out there.”
The student was injured at some point on his way back home to Inwood from the Lower East Side, where he had spent the night out with friends. The family thinks he was attacked along the L-train stops because he was taken to the hospital with dirt on his hat and clothes, his mom said.
“And under his nails. But it’s that grimy kind of street dirt, so it’s more consistent with a filthy subway or subway station,” Louise Reist told CBS News. “The doctors know with certainty that he was hit on the top right back of his head with a very heavy object.”
The Colombia graduate student suffered seizures in the back of an Uber after a night out with friends. Louise Reist via NBC4
Reist has been on a ventilator following the alleged attack. Louise Reist via NBC4His sister, Lisa Reist, told CBS that the family has been left wondering whether her brother was attacked because he is gay and genderqueer.
“He dances. He acts,” she told the news outlet. “He just has so much talent. He’s a really supportive sibling, like, we’re really close.”‘
Poilce have not confirmed that Reist was attacked and are investigating that possibility and whether he just fell, sources said.
Jay Reist left the bar Dream Baby on Avenue B at about 1 a.m. on July 21, law enforcement sources said. He was later spotted coming up the stairs of subway stop at 15th Street and Eighth Avenue, then got into an Uber at 2:13 a.m., according to the sources.
Reist’s sister told CBS that she had wondered if her brother was attacked for being gay and genderqueer. jayyriberry/instagramHe started to have a seizure on the ride home, so the driver called 911 and the student was picked up by an ambulance at Dyckman and Broadway, a police spokesperson said.
Doctors don’t believe he’ll be able to return to school in the fall even with a speedy recovery, his family told CBS. Classmates set up a GoFundMe for medical expenses that had raised more than $79,000 as of Thursday.
