Man cut in half by PATH train in Manhattan

From the New York Post:

By Susan Edelman and David Meyer

ay 5, 2020 | 11:41am

A man wandering the PATH in Manhattan was sliced in half by an oncoming train early Tuesday, Port Authority officials said.

The victim, who had walked the tracks from 23rd Street, was attempting to find cover as the train approached the 33rd Street Station, an agency rep said.

A source said the body’s separate halves were left lying opposite one another in the northbound and southbound tracks.

It was not clear what the man was doing on the tracks.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/man-cut-in-half-by-path-train-in-nyc/

Comment:
What is clear is that the NYPD will never concede that this man was probably forced on to the tracks by murderous criminals.

Suggested question to be asked of NYPD officials: how many people have ever been arrested for walking on the tracks?

Twenty-three Thousand Surveillance Cameras Installed!

This is a repost from May1, 2016.

A report of a recent assault on a young woman in a Chicago train includes a statement by the Chicago Transit Authority that included the following paragraph.

CTA has more than 23,000 security cameras across all stations, buses and trains; it's one of the few system-wide networks in the nation and has proved to be an invaluable tool for police investigating crimes committed on or near CTA property. In fact, the cameras are a contributing factor behind the 25 percent decrease in crime reported across CTA properties in 2015 - the fourth straight year that crimes have decreased on the CTA.

Why doesn't the leadership of the NYPD demand that thousands of cameras be installed in the New York transit system?

Here's what I think: such cameras would record criminals killing victims in track homicides, jeopardizing the "no evidence of foul play" mantra automatically played by the NYPD when such violent deaths occur and there are no civilian witnesses. Cameras would make life difficult for the MTA's lawyers (it would be really hard to convince a jury that a murder victim was responsible for his own death) and I think keeping those lawyers happy is more important to NYPD's leadership than is protecting passengers from violent, even murderous, thugs.

Unbelievable Numbers

There seems to be no limit to the brazenness of the MTA and its loyal flunkies, the supervising officials of NYPD's Transit Division.

As published in MTA Annual Reports, statistics provided by the NYPD show the following yearly totals of murders in the subway during the ten-year period, 2009-2018:

                                                       2009         2
                                                       2010         2
                                                       2011         1
                                                       2012         2
                                                       2013         1
                                                       2014         2
                                                       2015         2
                                                       2016         2
                                                       2017         0
                                                       2018         1

That's a total of fifteen homicides in ten years.

But according to the MTA/NYPD a total of twenty-four individuals managed to kill themselves "accidentally" during just one of those years, 2012.

How do so many (mostly un-witnessed)  "accidents" happen?  Well, these are the straight-faced explanations of the NYPD and the MTA: some people go for walks on active subway tracks and some people, ignoring warning signs, walk from one car to another and, despite the well-designed safety chains in place, manage somehow to fall "accidentally" to the tracks.

Having spent thousands of hours in the subway, I give you my count of the number of times I saw a civilian on the tracks: zero.

Having crossed from one car to another on moving trains hundreds of times, I know it is not possible to fall to the tracks while doing that. The safety chains in place would prevent accidental falls. (The man who pushed a young woman to her death in 1982 had to disconnect the chains.)

I conclude that New York City police commanders' primary objective is to protect the MTA in the event they are sued for the "wrongful death" of the deceased. If the police reports blame the victim the MTA's lawyers' case is stronger.

Of course, placing the lawyers' narrow concerns ahead of the safety of passengers also helps the thugs who murder passengers by throwing them off trains or forcing them into tunnels. Perpetrators of such murders have no need to fear the NYPD.

NOTE: I suspect that the MTA/NYPD practice of promptly reporting to the media the occurrence of "accidental" rail deaths has been discontinued or sharply curtailed. If a de facto news blackout has indeed been imposed, it probably was in reaction to what has been published on this site.

Related posting: No Cameras?  No Problem!

Another Late Night Track Killing

A  man's body found on the tracks at 3:20 AM and this report from the Daily News does not even mention the possibility of homicide.

As for the theory that he accidentally fell while walking between cars, anyone who makes a perfunctory examination of the between cars area would conclude that such an accident is a physical impossibility.

But the MTA/NYPD once even classified a witnessed track homicide as "accident" so the public should expect the world's most corrupt police department to continue the practice.

Related postings:

Another track death at 4:30 AM

Guess When this "Accident" Happened

Three Deaths, Zero Videos

An Epidemic of Unwitnessed Falls ... Updated

There have been few recent postings to this site where I provide links to published reports of fatal and near-fatal track "accidents" that the police never investigated as possible homicides.

I suspect that, although several fatal track events probably occurred, the NYPD/MTA bosses had decided not to routinely inform local media. I do not know if they were motivated to do that to prevent me from posting strongly-worded doubt of the "accident" classification but if they were, they have been successful.

Readers who think I am overly suspicious of the NYPD/MTA's control of the news are invited to explain why the stupendous one-year total of twenty-four fatal "accidents" in 2012 was followed by near-zero numbers in the immediately subsequent years.

Now, suddenly, the NYPD/MTA seems to have reinstated the practice of advising media of "accidental" deaths and near-deaths.

On "Monday night" (per the Daily News, he was "walking between cars"about 11 p.m.)  April 29th a man in his thirties lost an arm and both legs when struck by a train in Queens. The New York Post reported that criminality is not suspected by (presumably) the NYPD

At 1:00 a.m. April 30th  according to the May 1st Daily News ( a man "walking between cars" on a train approaching the W 79th Street station "slipped and fell" under the wheels. He was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in critical condition.

Also from the May 1st Daily News: at 3:10 a.m. on April 30th a seventy-six-year-old man "fell" from a Grand Central platform and was critically injured after being struck by a train

At 5:10 a.m. on May 3rd a sixty-year-old man was struck and killed by a train at the East 28th Street and Park Avenue station. The New York Post wrote that he had "stumbled" onto the tracks and that the (always predictable) NYPD said "no criminality was suspected." 

On May 4th at about 3:45 a.m. a 34 year-old man was injured after falling to the tracks while "walking between cars."

Update. On Monday May 6th yet another man fell between cars to his death at 9:15 a.m. at the Bronx's Jackson Avenue station. A northbound train at that station at that time probably was not jammed with rush hour passengers.

Commentary

Having used the subway for years and having walked between cars hundreds of times I know it is impossible to accidentally fall to the tracks. The safety chains in place even prevented a corpse from reaching the tracks and when the murderer of Tanya Middleton decided to throw her off the train he first had to detach the safety chain.

Four Impossible Deaths

As a perfunctory investigation would confirm, it is physically impossible for a person walking between subway cars to accidentally fall to the tracks. There are assemblies of heavy-duty safety chains in place that ensure such deaths simply cannot occur. The murderer of Tanya Middleton had to disconnect the chains in order to push her off the train.

But the media accepts as believable the MTA/NYPD claim that four men did the impossible in a single month.   

Updated "NYPD says 'No criminality is suspected' "

For those who think my estimate of "hundreds" of hidden homicides in the years since the nearly-successful attempt to blame Tanya Middleton for her own subway murder is too high—or who think the "bad old days" of subway crime are long past—I invite them to ponder the reported track deaths for the year 2012.

For a number of reasons the media's reporting of "death-by-train" incidents is sketchy. If the New York papers and other traditional media are told foul play is not suspected, they will probably ignore it, and, based on the following summary and my reading of scores of other reports, I am convinced that NYPD officials responsible for transit matters never officially suspect foul play in any unwitnessed track death. 

Why Do So Many "Accidents" Occur When There are So Few Riders?

According to NYPD officials, people who ride the New York subway after midnight have some very strange habits. With remarkable frequency, they place themselves in great danger when there are no other passengers available to verify their fatal carelessness.

None of the underlying reports mention any civilian witnesses to the violent deaths listed below.

We know that since New York City has the world's most un-surveilled mass transit system that they were not recorded by any camera.

So we are left with a simple choice: do we believe the NYPD/MTA claims that every one of these individuals was entirely responsible for his own violent deaths?

Or have we learned that when it comes to unwitnessed violent deaths in the subway the NYPD has one mission: protect the MTA, even if it means allowing vicious killers to go unpunished?  

• Another Late Night "Accident" 1:00 a.m.
• Teen found dead on Bronx train tracks at 2:30 a.m.
• Two track walkers killed by trains at 5:00 a.m.
• Another Track Death at 4:30 a.m.
• The victim was hit by the F train just after the Parsons Blvd. train station at 2:09 a.m. in Jamaica, officials said.
• A 24-year-old man was killed after hitting his head while “surfing,” possibly atop a train rumbling through Brooklyn  ... about 2:30 a.m., police said.
• The victim was on the tracks when he was smashed by an elevated southbound 6 train ... at 2:43 a.m., according to officials.
• A man laying on the tracks ... was hit by a northbound train about 4:30 a.m. ... a NYPD spokesman said.
• ... another "accidental" death of a person who was "walking" on the tracks ... at 4:15 a.m..
• A 58-year-old man walking along the tracks in a Queens train station was struck and killed by an oncoming train early Saturday ... about 3:10 a.m., officials said.
• ... unidentified man, in his 20s, was found dead at the 79th St. station ...his lower body seen dangling beneath the elevated subway line — about 4:50 a.m., officials said."
• Man dies after jumping in front of train at 5:00 am, police say.
•  ... unidentified commuter was at the Third Ave. station near E. 14th St. at about 4:45 a.m. when the train rammed into him.
•  ... the victim was walking on the train tracks when he was struck by a southbound 6 train about 5:49 a.m
• ... the man, whose age was not known, was hit by a southbound 1 train at the 72nd Street station just before 2:40 a.m.
•   ... the unidentified, 24-year-old man was hit by a Manhattan-bound N train ... just before 5:30 a.m.,
•   ... the man, who was not immediately identified, was hit by a Manhattan-bound 7 train ... at 3:15 a.m., police said.
• ... the victim, whose identity has not been released, was struck in the station ... at about 5:30 am.
•  ... unidentified man apparently jumped into the path of a southbound train at the 137th Street - City College subway station just after 5 a.m., the MTA said. [emphasis added]`
  
  
  
  
  

No Cameras? No Problem!

In December 2012 a woman pushed a man to his death. He had been waiting for a train on a Queens elevated subway platform. This was not a cowardly unwitnessed late night attack by criminals—it was not a hidden homicide—but the act of an irrational person who was seen muttering to herself before she pushed her victim in front of an incoming train. 

The crazed woman quickly fled the station but police—thanks to a recording made on a surveillance camera—soon had a complete description. She was quickly apprehended and charged.

But that camera was not on the subway platform. It was in a retail store window on Queens Boulevard. 

Yes, riders on the world's largest transit system, who are supposedly protected by America's largest metropolitan police force, can only hope that their attacker leaves the subway and runs past a Chinese restaurant (or a nail salon or a pawn shop) that just happens to have a camera pointing toward the sidewalk. If not, the criminal will go free. 

The lack of cameras in the subway has been noticed by The New York Times and the Daily News. Reporter Pete Donohue wrote in the News that in a certain high-crime area in Queens,  

Man survives subway attack and the MTA releases a video!

An amazing story.

Not that someone was attacked in the subway late at night.

That happens a lot.

But that he survived and ... wonder of wonders ... the MTA/NYPD released a video of the attackers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/man-hit-train-punched-pair-union-square-article-1.3704065

Meanwhile, based on the absence of news all the on-the-track killers have decided to retire.

That last sentence is satire.

In my opinion, the MTA is getting away with silence, a cover up. 

If this victim had not survived I am convinced the usual "no evidence" of foul play routine would have been followed.

Note to new comers: Union Square is a major station in Manhattan. I doubt that anti-crime cameras are in other less busy stations.