A man and woman were killed on Tuesday when they were run over by a subway train in Manhattan, police said.
Police are investigating the possibility that the man who died was a good Samaritan who had fallen after trying to catch the woman as she fell between the two cars.
Criminal incidents in the New York City subway are at an all-time high. Mayor Eric Adams was on the scene not long after the tragic incident to say that an investigation is ongoing, but no criminality is suspected .
The deceased man was James Miller, 44, said law enforcement sources and a neighbor of Miller’s family in Garden City, L.I.
The woman was reportedly found under the train and the man was found squeezed into a space between the train and the platform around the sixth or seventh train car.
Investigators say the woman may have fallen between the subway cars when the train was stopped and that the man went down to attempt to rescue her.
After the man landed on the tracks, he attempted to climb back up to the platform before the train took off but was crushed.
The New York Fire Department reported getting a call that a person on the tracks was in cardiac arrest.
Witnesses told responding officers that they did not see anyone get pushed off the platform. Criminality is not currently suspected in the fatal incident.
The neighbor, Matt Curtin, 61, said Miller’s father is a former Nassau County police officer, and that trying to save a life would be ‘the kind of values he took coming from a home where his father was a police officer for 30-plus years.’
Miller was one of nine children, another former neighbor noted.
‘Oh, my God, he’s kind of like one of us,’ said a 72-year-old woman who asked not to be named.
‘We’re in shock. We just heard it this evening.’
Residents who live near Miller’s childhood home remembered him as a friendly, helpful boy.
‘He was a great guy,’ the elderly woman added.: ‘Good heart. Great musician, handsome.’
The incident happened around 10:25 a.m. at the L line station at W. 14th St. and Sixth Ave.
