Scared Girl Pulled Knife on “Subway Thug”: Family

A 16-year-old girl had been accosted and feared for her life when she pulled out a knife in a confrontation that left a man dead, her family said.
    
"She said she feared for her life and she felt like she was going to be raped, so she panicked,'' Tony Lovitt said of his teenage daughter, Cyan Brown. "She tried to run away, but another gentleman grabbed her.
    
She "did what she had to do. She was scared to death with seven or eight males following her. Anyone would do the same thing,'' Lovitt said.
    
The teenager remained at large Friday, but her mother and older sister said they knew she would have to turn herself in to authorities following the Christmas Eve death. Police said they received a 911 call Thursday evening reporting a man stabbed inside of an F train station in Queens. Thomas Winston, 29, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
    
Erika Brown said her daughter was on a short trip to the chicken and pizza restaurant down the street from their home when a group of men chased her onto a subway train and tried to fondle her.
    
The tearful girl called her older sister, 21-year-old Lynnea Adams, a few hours later and told her that a man had tried to push himself on her, and that she had pulled out a knife, Adams said.
    
"She didn't mean for that to happen, but at the same time she had to protect herself,'' she said.
    
On Friday, Brown said police had not yet spoken to her or her daughter. The high school sophomore had never had problems with the law, and it wasn't clear why she would have had a knife, Brown and Adams said.
    
At the home of Winston's aunt Diane Greenspan, relatives said the aspiring rapper had been building a better life after trouble with the law and homelessness. Greenspan has been raising his 10-month-old daughter, and had been expecting Winston to come by on
 Christmas Eve with presents.
    
"He was trying to get his life together so he could get his child back,'' she said.