(The following article by Joshua Robin appeared in NewsDay on April 19.)
NEW YORK — The shouts of train track workers that someone has been struck. Blood from underneath a conductor’s door. A flood of police and medical technicians into a dim subway station.
These are the images observed by New York City Transit workers who were first on the scene of three fatal subway accidents during the winter, according to accounts detailed in reports made available to Newsday under the Freedom of Information Act.
The three accidents came within a span of less than two months. Two of the fatalities — involving track workers — forced immediate changes in the Transit Authority’s safety code.
Those deaths — Joy Antony and Kurien Baby — occurred within two days of each other. On Nov. 21, Antony, 41, a signal maintainer, was struck and killed by a southbound No. 3 train while checking signal boxes near the 86th Street station.
The next day, a northbound E train fatally struck Baby, 57, just south of Canal Street in TriBeCa as he was cleaning and replacing light bulbs.
On Jan. 18, conductor Janell Bennerson, 39, struck her head on a gate while putting her head out of a window as an A train left the Aqueduct-North Conduit Avenue station in Ozone Park.
Workers responding to that accident initially believed she had been shot, the documents show, after observing a pool of blood collecting underneath the conductor’s door.
“Customers on the train stated they did hear a bang,” wrote one superintendent whose name is illegible, in a “correspondence sheet.”
“No one actually [saw] what had happen but a short time later, blood was coming out from under the Conductors door. When the train reached Rockaway Blvd and the conductor didn’t open the doors a couple of customers attempted and did open the Conductors door. Upon opening the Conductors door the Conductor fell out onto the floor. One of the Customers was a EMS employee and tried to perform CPR to no avail.”
In another memo, David Bobe, a zone superintendent, writes that the medical examiner later determined Bennerson had not been shot, but rather struck her head. He writes that soon after the fatality, crews tried to prevent other conductors from hitting their heads on the gate. “Station Maintenance was on the scene and was starting to paint the rail yellow.”
According to the accounts, Bobe appeared to have been working alone when he was struck.
“We were just getting started to work, 10:50 p.m. I got on the platform with a ladder,” writes one track employee working with Bobe that night whose name is illegible. “Someone yelled that one of our guys got hit by the train. That’s when I realized it was Bobe.”
Another worker, Yin L. Yan, said he was looking under a train when “I saw a body under the train and a safety vest.”
Memos concerning Antony’s death spotlight the hazards track employees face as they work in narrow quarters.
In one letter with the subject “Man Under,” superintendent Thomas A. Simmons writes to another superintendent that Antony “leaned backwards and was hit.”
Later, Simmons writes: “Mr. Anthony was removed D.O.A. to Bellevue Hospital by EMS.”
An internal NYC Transit investigation faulted Antony’s supervisor, Deanroy Cox, in the death because he asked Antony to perform other duties instead of serving as a lookout for approaching trains, without appointing anyone to replace him.
The city’s largest transit union, which does not represent Cox, is contesting that finding, maintaining that Cox was merely following a common NYC Transit practice.
The three memos pertaining to Antony make no specific mention of Cox and do not spell out whether Antony was told to switch jobs.
Paul Fleuranges, a Transit spokesman, said investigators have not yet issued a final report on the other two fatalities.
In late November, Transit officials mandated that a flagger will be assigned to every work crew and all crews must notify a command center before beginning work. The information then will be relayed to train operators approaching the area.