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Woman Passed Out On Subway Tracks And Died After NYE Phish, Disco Biscuits Concert Marathon
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 4, 2013
Modified Jan 4, 2013
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 4, 2013
Modified Jan 4, 2013
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The first subway fatality of 2013 was a 28-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was visiting New York City to ring in the New Year with her fiance, Phish, and the Disco Biscuits. Dana Ferrari, a medical assistant who grew up in Newton, NJ, was run over by a No. 2 train at 34th Street around 5:30 a.m. on New Year's Day. Sources told the Daily News she is believed to have walked down a flight of service stairs to the track bed and lain down on the tracks. A Reddit user has this account, in a post titled "Lost my BFF after phish and The Disco Biscuits":
She was spun and I guess confused the doors to the theater and Penn station. They were right next to each other. She ended up downstairs and wandered onto the tracks and laid down??!?! And was then hit by a train and died. I just can't wrap my head around it. How did she end up down there. Why did she lay down. I can only guess Xanax and L or some crazy mix like that.
I will never get over this or fully heal. She was a big part of my life for around 10 years. I love you Dana and I will never forget you or what we shared.
The Phish show at Madison Square Garden concluded just before 1 a.m., while the Disco Biscuits concert started in the Theater at Madison Square Garden at 11:30—but that band also played three sets, and some revelers, including Ferrari and her fiance, simply made their way downstairs after Phish. According to one person on the Phantasy Tour message board, Ferrari was "kicked out around 3rd set for smoking a butt." That would have been sometime between 4:30 and 6 a.m., though we find it hard to believe anyone could get kicked out of MSG for smoking anything.
Ferrari's sister Leslie tells the Post that her sister's fiance, Blake Pupo, went to the restroom during the concert, and when he returned, Dana was missing. The two had planned to spend the night at the Marriott, and the last Leslie Ferrari heard from her sister was a text message at the stroke of midnight wishing her a happy new year. She also tells the tabloid that her sister wasn't suicidal and "definitely wasn’t a drinker. We’d like to have more answers. How did she get into the train station?"
Ferrari did not have ID on her, just a set of keys with a CVS card registered to Pupo, which is how investigators identified her. A spokeswoman for the city Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet determined the cause of death and says, "We are doing testing and further investigation."
Tagged
dana ferrari
disco bicuits
MTA
phish
subway
subway death
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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