A 39-year-old man was charged on Tuesday with shoving a woman’s head against a moving subway train in an apparently random attack at a Manhattan station that left the woman critically injured, the police said.

The man, Kamal Semrade, was arrested late Monday at a homeless shelter near La Guardia Airport in Queens, the police said. He was charged with attempted murder and assault and was awaiting arraignment Tuesday evening, officials said.

The shoving episode was the latest unsettling example of the kind of random violent crime that has made some New Yorkers wary of the subway and has led officials to flood stations with police officers to reassure riders that the mass-transit system is safe.

Mr. Semrade and his victim, 35, boarded the same E train early Sunday, with Mr. Semrade entering first by jumping a turnstile, the police said. Both got off when the train stopped at the Lexington Avenue/63rd Street station at around 6 a.m., the police said. (The E was running on the F line because of track work.)

As the train began to pull out, the police said, Mr. Semrade approached the woman from behind and pushed her head into it, causing her to fall back on the platform. She was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition with spinal injuries and cuts to her head, the police said.

The police did not release the woman’s name, but an online fund-raiser established to help pay her medical expenses identifies her as Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy, an illustrator and designer who immigrated to New York from Turkey.

Pictures of the attacker captured by cameras in the station and circulated by the police helped lead to Mr. Semrade’s arrest, officials said. The images show him wearing a dark shirt, dark pants and white shoes and clutching a coffee cup.

Richard Davey, the president of New York City Transit, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority division that operates the subway, praised the Police Department for moving quickly to make an arrest.

“It’s now up to prosecutors to pursue maximum consequences available under the law,” Mr. Davey said in a statement.

Investigators believe Mr. Semrade had been living at the Queens shelter for two years, the police said. But city social service records show he has been assigned to a Bronx shelter since April 2021, according to a person with access to the records who was not authorized to speak about them publicly. The reason for the apparent discrepancy was unclear.

Maria Cramer and Andy Newman contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.