He had a guardian angel looking out for him.
The 27-year-old man pushed onto Manhattan subway tracks following a staredown with a sicko straphanger is a US Army soldier who was on leave trying to attend his father’s funeral.
Aaron Kareem Watson told The Post he was en route Friday morning to attend the funeral of his dad, Alfred Kenneth Watson, who died in a Brooklyn fire last month – when he got into an argument with another passenger on the E train over who stared at whom first.
The suspect followed Watson off the southbound train as it pulled into the West Fourth Street Station in Greenwich Village and later shoved him onto the tracks from the platform after the train pulled away, authorities said.
Quick-thinking bystanders hauled Watson back onto the platform before disaster struck. The soldier had minor bruises and scratches and was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
However, the incident caused him to miss the funeral for his father, who died July 23 during a blaze in East New York, Brooklyn, and would have turned 63 on Saturday.
“It’s a very hard thing to deal with — especially because I wasn’t expecting him to pass away, especially in the way that he did,” said Watson, who joined the Army two months ago and was undergoing basic training in Georgia before being granted temporary leave to attend the memorial service.
“And I was struggling a bit during my time in the military, so I imagine missing [the funeral] didn’t help either.”
Watson said he believed the suspect — described as a stocky man about 5-foot-7, dressed all in black with black and white sneakers and carrying a black bag – is homeless. He’s still on the run and no arrest has been made as the case remains under investigation, police said.
“I wasn’t really in the best mood, but, during the train ride, I saw someone staring at me and staring at me very hard for a while,” said Watson.
“I got agitated over it, and while I was coming out of the train — when I got out of West Fourth — I pretty much said, ‘I don’t know why you’re staring at me so hard, guy?’
“He came out of the train while I was getting off, and followed me up the stairs, and he was just shouting at me all the time, being very aggressive and instigating a fight with me.”
Watson visited his aunt, Sylvia Watson, at her home in East New York on Saturday.
She teared up while discussing her family’s recent misfortune.
“I am devastated, because what else could go wrong?” she said. “Because I knew he took his father’s death too hard. He didn’t get a chance to see his dad. It’s rough.
“He was traveling here, so that he can view his father before they do the cremation, before they put him inside the crematorium. So he was unable to view his father because of this situation.”
