A 16-year-old graffiti tagger was hit by a train in a Brooklyn subway tunnel Saturday night, tagging with two friends. As of yesterday the NY Times reports that Jose Juarez, of Sunset Park, is in critical but stable condition—however, his right leg was severed.
His cousin Julio Ochoa told police they were walking on the tracks of a northbound N line at 10:10 p.m.—75 feet north of the platform at the Kings Highway—when the train struck. They had been standing inside areas normally used by maintenance workers alongside the tracks, anticipating the train to pass; it's unclear how exactly Juarez was positioned that resulted in his leg being severed. Ochoa says, "The train sliced his knee. I saw sparks and him laying there.”
When authorities arrived, Juarez asked to walk, but they told him he had no leg; his cousin recalled that only a little bit of skin was left connecting it. And an officer told the paper the teen tagger was “lucky that all he had was his leg amputated. If he had been touching another piece of metal when he was hit by the shoe, he would have burst into flames because of all the electricity.” The shoe connects to the third rail.
