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Homeless Man Dies While Subway Surfing After Smoking Synthetic Weed
By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 31, 2013
Modified Oct 31, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 31, 2013
Modified Oct 31, 2013
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Yesterday, a homeless man suffered a fatal head injury after subway surfing atop a 6 train in Manhattan. That 45-year-old man, who police haven't yet identified, climbed between cars and atop the downtown 6 train near the 96th Street station just around noon on Wednesday; he spread out his arms, then hit a steel bar and suffered head trauma. And the man had reportedly been smoking synthetic marijuana before the incident.
Pablo Reyes, 45, identified the man as Grumps, a panhandler who has been homeless for about a year, and may have been staying at a shelter on West 25th Street. "He was hanging out getting high," Reyes told the News. "I told him, ‘Stop getting high off that s**t. It ain’t no good for you. He probably was hallucinating." Reyes was a witness to the fatal incident as well: “He was standing up with his hands open. He saw the beam coming. He laid down. He tried to duck down. It opened his head right up.“
“He was still breathing when I lifted him up,” Reyes told the Post. “He was trying to talk — ‘Help me, help!’ I’m in shock. There was a lot of blood on the tracks.” The man died at Metropolitan Hospital. An MTA spokesman commented to the Post: “Subway surfing is simply one of the dumbest things you can do.”
Tagged
death
homeless
manhattan
MTA
police
subway
subway fatalities
subway surfer
train
ues
upper east side
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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