On December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz (/ˈɡɛts/) shot four black teenagers on a New York City Subway train in Manhattan after they allegedly tried to rob him. All four victims survived, though one, Darrell Cabey, was paralyzed and suffered brain damage as a result of his injuries. Goetz fled to Bennington, Vermont, before surrendering to police nine days after the shooting. He was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses. A jury subsequently found Goetz guilty of one count of carrying an unlicensed firearm and acquitted him of the remaining charges. For the firearm offense, he served eight months of a one-year sentence. In 1996, Cabey obtained a $43 million civil judgment against Goetz after a civil jury ruled Goetz as liable, equivalent to $86 million today.

The incident sparked a nationwide debate on crime in major U.S. cities, the legal limits of self-defense, and the extent to which the citizenry could rely on the police to secure their safety. Questions of what impact race—and racism—had on Goetz, the public reaction, and the criminal verdict were hotly contested. Goetz was dubbed the "Subway Vigilante" by the New York press; to his supporters, he came to symbolize frustrations with the high crime rates of the 1980s. The incident has been cited as leading to successful National Rifle Association campaigns to loosen restrictions for concealed carrying of firearms.

In the early afternoon of December 22, 1984, four men from the Bronx—19-year-olds Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and Darrell Cabey, and 18-year-old James Ramseur—boarded a downtown 2 train (a Broadway–Seventh Avenue express). Canty would later testify that the victims were en route to steal from video arcade machines in Manhattan. 37-year-old Bernhard Goetz boarded the train at the 14th Street station in Manhattan. At the time, about fifteen to twenty other passengers were in a R22 subway car, the seventh car of the ten-car train. Those involved and witnesses disagree what happened next.

Troy Canty asked Goetz how he was, and shortly thereafter stood up, approached Goetz, and made some overture for money: According to Canty he alone approached Goetz, and said, "Can I have $5?" According to Goetz, Canty was joined by another of the teens and Canty said, "Give me five dollars" in a "normal tone" of voice with a smile on his face. In 1986, the NY Court of Appeals concluded from grand jury evidence that Goetz pulled a handgun and fired four shots at the four men, initially striking three of them. After initially opening fire, Goetz then bent down to Cabey, who was cowering on the ground, and said, "You don't look so bad. Here's another," and shot once again, missing. Cabey's spine was severed, resulting in brain damage and partial paralysis.

Shortly after the shooting, the train conductor entered the car and loudly exclaimed, "What's going on?" He approached Goetz and asked what happened. Goetz pointed to the north end of the car and then told him, "I don't know ... they tried to rob me and I shot them." The conductor then went to the passengers to check if they were injured before returning to Goetz and asked if he was a police officer, which Goetz denied, and he then asked Goetz for the gun, which Goetz refused to turn over.

Bernhard Hugo Goetz was born on November 7, 1947, in the Kew Gardens, Queens neighborhood to German immigrants. His father was Lutheran and his mother was Jewish before converting to Lutheranism. While growing up, Goetz lived with his parents and three older siblings in Upstate New York, where his father ran a dairy farm and a bookbinding business. Goetz attended boarding school in Switzerland before returning to the United States to obtain a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and nuclear engineering from New York University. Goetz then moved to Orlando, Florida, where his family had relocated, and worked at his father's residential development business. After a divorce, Goetz moved back to New York City, where he started an electronics business out of his Greenwich Village apartment.

According to Goetz, in early 1981, he was the victim of a robbery at the Canal Street subway station. Goetz reported that three black teenagers had smashed him into a plate-glass door and thrown him to the ground, injuring his chest and knee. Goetz was involved in a struggle with one of the teenagers until police arrived; that individual accused Goetz of assaulting him. To his frustration, Goetz was detained for six hours, while the person he accused was released in two and a half hours. Goetz subsequently applied for a permit to carry a concealed handgun, on the basis of routinely carrying valuable equipment and large sums of cash, but his application was denied on the grounds of "insufficient need". He bought the 5-shot .38-caliber revolver he would ultimately use in the shooting during a trip to Florida.

Goetz was known to use racist language: his neighbor Myra Friedman reported overhearing Goetz having said, "The only way we're going to clean up this street is to get rid of the spics and niggers" at a community meeting eighteen months before the shooting. Friedman's account was excluded from the criminal jury trial, but in a subsequent civil action, Goetz admitted to having used both epithets at a neighborhood meeting.