A 49-year-old Queens woman was killed after being pushed in front of a subway train in Times Square on Monday, the New York Police Department said. The attack disrupted traffic at one of the city’s busiest transit hubs as trains were diverted and emergency workers converged on the scene.

Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said witnesses on both the subway platform and the train itself flagged down police officers and pointed out a suspect.

Melanie Liverpool-Turner, a 30-year-old Queens woman, was taken into custody almost immediately and later charged with second-degree murder. The police described her as emotionally disturbed and said that she had made up a story last month about pushing a woman onto the tracks. The victim’s name was not immediately released.

The police were combing through video from the platform and the area to better understand what happened, but the preliminary investigation suggested that the attack was unprovoked.