Over the past five days, there have been a shocking seven subway-related incidents that have led to at least four fatalities and one person having their legs severed. We've now learned that one of the other victims is not doing well either: the man who was struck by a 1 train at W. 86th Street on Friday morning is in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit at St. Luke's Hospital, according to a hospital spokeswoman. We've also learned from witnesses that he had accidentally fallen onto the tracks: "My 18-year-old daughter witnessed this while on her way to a class," Elaine DePrince told us. "She said that the victim had been looking for the train. Then he backed up and suddenly tripped forward and fell onto the tracks."
"He appeared to be carrying two shopping bags, and she said that she thought he had lost his balance because of them," DePrince continued. A worker at the station told the Post a similar thing: “That person slipped and fell,” said Debesh Barua, a newsstand owner. “While they did their investigation, the train wasn’t operating for an hour and a half.”
We spoke to four other witnesses who were either on the train or the platform around 10:30 a.m. Friday when the incident happened. Initially, witnesses, MTA and FDNY all identified the person trapped under the train as a woman. DePrince added that her daughter believed the victim to be a woman as well.
MTA workers didn't see the victim at first: "The MTA worker looked below the stopped train for a person. He didn't see anything," witness Dan Caster told us. "Where I moved away, I heard moans and screams. I told the MTA worker I heard something. It was so horrific and people were gathering, I left after that." He added that he thought it sounded like "a middle aged woman's cries." Witness Orlando Olier, who was on the train at the time, told us he heard "bloodcurdling screams."
Witness Rebecca Perry said she was hurrying to catch the train when she saw the chaos on the platform. "I made it to the platform, and right away, I heard tons of screaming (I think mostly from people who witnessed it, maybe from her too)," she told us. "I turned around, and literally swarms of policemen/firemen were right behind me, running over to the tracks...I saw one girl crying, and asked her what was going on. 'Someone was JUST hit by a train.' Apparently I was arriving only a minute or two after it happened, and someone had called 911 right away."
According to DePrince, some of the initial cries people heard at the station were from children: "A group of very small children dressed in costumes for Purim also witnessed the accident, and they were very upset by the screaming and began to scream too."
On Wednesday, a man was fatally struck by an F train at the Roosevelt Avenue / 74th Street station in Jackson Heights; another man was injured after falling onto the tracks at Columbus Circle that day. On Thursday, another person was fatally struck by an F train in Queens. On Friday morning, this man was struck by a 1 train on the Upper West Side; that evening, another man was fatally struck by a 2 train at Penn Station. Saturday night, a man had his legs severed after falling onto the tracks and being struck by a train at Yankee Stadium; and on Sunday morning, a man was fatally struck by an E train in Manhattan in an apparent suicide.
