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Boy Survives Solo Subway Ride From Marble Hill to South Ferry
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 14, 2009
Modified Apr 14, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 14, 2009
Modified Apr 14, 2009
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Yesterday morning around 7:30, Griselda Sosa was buying coffee at a bodega near the 225th Street No. 1 train station in Marble Hill, the northernmost neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, when her 5-year-old son Samuel slipped away. Far, far away. Sosa tells the Daily News she'd been arguing with her son before he disappeared: "He was mad [because] he wanted to take the bus. I said, 'No, we'll take the train.'" Samuel, it seems, decided to embrace his fate alone.
"When I open the door [of the bodega], I don't see him," Sosa explains. She ran frantically to the bus stop, thinking Samuel had defied her, but seeing no sign of the boy, she scrambled up to the elevated subway platform. The station agent says, "I didn't see him, I wouldn't have let him go. My heart was beating [and] I was terrified. I was afraid something might have happened." Police believe that Samuel had already scooted under a turnstile and boarded a southbound 1 train to freedom.
At 8:40 a.m., two conductors at South Ferry discovered him sitting alone in a subway car at the train's last stop. Conductor Benjamin Franco tells the News, "He looked like he was having a good time, not a care in the world, like it was just another ride for him. He wasn't nervous or jittery, just a happy-go-lucky kid on the train." Like bees to honey, New York City boys seems drawn to the subway; in February 3-year-old Christian Marquez took a solo trip on the 7 train from Flushing to Jackson Heights. And last year one mother, a NY Sun columnist, intentionally left her 9-year-old son at Bloomingdale's with a map, a MetroCard and $20 and told him to get home safe.
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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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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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