Vigil for Fremont native pushed to her death in NYC subway

SAN FRANCISCO - A vigil is being held Tuesday night in San Francisco's Chinatown for Michelle Go, the Fremont native who died after she was pushed in front of a subway train in New York City.

Friends and community members remembered Go as an avid traveler who touched many people's lives.

At Tuesday's gathering, candles were lit and people who knew her shared their memories. "I'm really sorry, Michelle, that that day you were the casualty," said one woman who attended. 

"Michelle I met on a number of occasions. She was really friendly, engaging, a person you could really talk to," Richard Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance in San Jose, told KTVU in an interview.

"It's just a sad and shocking kind of situation, to hear this kind of information and this kind of news," Konda said. "It's disturbing. When I realized, I got really emotional."

Police say a homeless man pushed go to her death at the Times Square subway station in an unprovoked attack. He later turned himself in to transit police.

"This is really a failure of the mental health system in the United States," Konda said.

Go worked at Deloitte Consulting in New York and had degrees from UCLA and NYU.

In a statement, Go's family said in part, r family released this photo and a statement that said in part, "She was a beautiful, brilliant, kind and intelligent woman who loved her family and friends, loved to travel the world and to help others. Her life was taken too soon in a senseless act of violence, and we pray that she gets the justice she deserves."

 "I think in our community a lot of people are one degree of separation from knowing somebody's who's been attacked or assaulted," said Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI hate and an Asian American Studies professor at SF State. 

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"Protecting our community's safety is an effort that's going to take all of us. It's not just policing work that would be enough, we need to start taking care of each other, being eyes and ears for one another," Jeung said

A classmate of Go's from American High School in Fremont said in a statement, in part, "I was just reading her yearbook messages and emails to me, and I think what ultimately sticks out is that she's just so friendly and always seemed to be having a good time, which was infectious."