Mourners attend vigils in S.F., NYC for Michelle Go, Bay Area native and subway attack victim

About a hundred people gathered Tuesday night at Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown and more than 1,000 in New York City to remember Michelle Alyssa Go, a 40-year-old Bay Area native who was killed last weekend when she was shoved onto the subway track at the Times Square station.

The San Francisco vigil, organized by Dear Community, began at 6 p.m, the same time the New York vigil organized by Asians Fighting Injustice at the Red Steps in Times Square. Friends of Go, as well as San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, spoke at the local event.

“Michelle was a high school classmate of mine and she lit up every room she was in,” said Gary Tan at the vigil in San Francisco, according to ABC7 News.

Go was killed Saturday morning after being pushed onto the southbound Q train tracks at the 42nd Street Times Square station, according to the New York Police Department. Authorities said she was on the train platform when she was “suddenly pushed” by a man, identified as 61-year-old Simon Martial, onto the tracks in an “unprovoked” attack. Martial was later charged with murder.

Officers arrived to discover Go with “severe trauma to her body” under the the train, where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel.

Go’s family previously issued a statement, which was read at the vigil: “We hope Michelle will be remembered for how she lived and not just how she died. She was a beautiful, brilliant, kind, and intelligent woman who loved her family and friends, loved to travel the world and to help others.”

More than a thousand people also huddled in freezing temperatures in Times Square on Tuesday, as a portrait of Go, alongside other Asian American Pacific Islanders killed or injured in attacks during the pandemic, smiled down on them from two large electronic billboards. The gathering also included remarks from NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Democratic Representative Grace Meng of Queens.

“As we put together this vigil together, I heard countless stories from her close friends and co-workers who talked about the way she lived… Michelle was giving, she was the best friend that anybody could have. Her friends called her the ultimate friend, who would drop everything with a smile to care for them,” said Asian Fighting Injustice founder Ben Wei.

“Losing this wonderful, young lady, the death of Michelle ripped at my heart,” Adams said. “To see what happened to her and to see what has happened to our city months after months.”

Go was born in Berkeley in 1981 and graduated from American High School in Fremont in 1998 before attending the University of California, Los Angeles. Go also received her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. She lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan and most recently worked at Deloitte.

“I was just shocked and disturbed — emotional,” said Richard Konda, executive director of Asian Law Alliance, who attended Santa Clara University law school with Go’s father, Justin, in the 1970s. “Instances of violence, they all kind of get to you but when it’s somebody you actually know, it’s even more disturbing and it’s hard to understand why they’re happening.”