Horror as young Met stagehand is killed on NY subway
NewsA Metropolitan Opera stagehand, Joseph Ancona, was dragged to his death after running to board an uptown Manhattan subway car after work.
Joseph Ancona, 20, was caught as the doors shut on the last car of a No. 1 train at 4:56 p.m. Monday, police said.
The Met confirmed he was a member of the stage crew, working in the electric construction shop. It said: ‘Joe was respected and well-liked by his fellow crew members and the Metropolitan Opera offers our deepest condolences to his family and friends.’
He is survived by a twin sister.
A GoFundMe page has been set up here.
I certainly don’t mean to minimize this tragedy but I rode the NY City subways every day for 20 years. I always saw the conductor keep his head out of the window — looking both ways onto the platform — as the train was pulling away from the station to prevent exactly this type of accident. Apparently this is not done any more?
“The news comes only months after another commuter was killed in a similar incident on the subway in July.
After the series of violent deaths on the subway, governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced on Saturday a plan to increase the presence of police officers in the transit system.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11357491/Met-Opera-stagehand-20-identified-victim-dragged-death-subway-train-NYC.html
New York is not only a toxic, but a lethal place to live.
This was an equipment malfunction, not a crime.
And the crime rate is far, far higher in Mississippi than NY.
There’s supposed to be a clutch mechanism that prevents the train from moving if a door is open. The conductor yes does lean out and look up and down the cars before he closes the doors.
I read a few articles but I’m still unclear on what exactly happened? Could someone familiar with the NY subway system explain? How/where was he dragged to, and which train hit him?? I can’t visualize this, nor can I understand why the sensors won’t detect that something is stuck between the doors, or the conductors/other passengers not noticing and stopping/opening the door? It says no criminal activity was involved, but surely there could be liabilities in terms of negligence, depending on the situation, no?
Usually the train won’t depart unless all of the doors are closed. Maybe the doors closed enough so that the train could leave. The stagehand was dragged by the train, and after that anything could have happened. The trains need to be upgraded so that this never happens again. They can be very long, and if only one conductor is looking, he might not see everything that is going on. Plus, the man tried to enter the train just as the doors were closing. The conductor may have already looked.
He’s supposed to look both ways as the train is in motion leaving the station – just before it gets to the end of the platform, where the conductor could possibly hit his head against the wall, he pulls into the car and closes the window. I’ve seen this done millions of time.
Right, thank you for the response. But he would have been dragged along the platform, in which case, no train should hit him. So this means the train had taken off far enough to leave the platform and yet no one was able to signal/notice? I don’t mean to be disrespectful by being so inquisitive, but it’s horrible to think that the unimaginable can happen anytime and take people’s lives…
There are interlocks that are supposed to prevent the train from moving if the door is not fully closed. There are rubber strips on the door that seal it; it’s possible that they closed just enough on his clothes that the interlocks closed and the train went into operation mode; the big question is whether or not the conductor messed up by not keeping their head out of the window as they are supposed to as the train is leaving the station.
As for the passengers inside, there may not have been enough time for them to notice and pull the emergency brake. And many of them don’t even know that the brake exists.
Perhaps he was just lost in-between cars. Actually it could be done when you’re drunk. But still pretty unclear this is.
Perhaps you should have googled the article, drunk has nothing to do with anything. His clothing or backpack got caught. In a door. It could have been anyone. It’s incredibly tragic. Have some compassion.
You don’t have all your senses or your wits about you when drunk, and accidents happen even moee so.
Absolutely ghastly for the young man – but there’s a family in this tragedy too!! Very sad.
Not to minimize what a tragedy this is, but meanwhile a new concert hall (or a massively rebuilt one) just opened across from the plaza from where the victim once worked. But SD chooses to ignore the story. I don’t get it. A writer based in London (either with the London or Financial Times) wrote that now with both rebuilt Geffen and Carnegie, his city should be so lucky. Other publications have also posted articles about the hall.
What has tgat to do with a young man sadly getting killed on the New York subway?
There are tragedies occurring in NYC on a daily basis. If the victim weren’t an employee at the Lincoln Center campus, would SD have used space in its blog to announce the young man’s death? IOW, why does SD think it’s relevant to feature a negative story that has an NYC/Met angle, but a positive story (with a NYC/Geffen) isn’t?
Why do people insist they are not doing something right before they do it?
News articles say “clothing” got caught, which might be slight enough to not trigger any door-open mechanism. But the articles also question how a conductor did not see this.
Terrible. God be with his family in the days ahead.