NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – A middle-aged man who was fatally struck by a Q train in Brooklyn on Tuesday may have been subway surfing and suffering from a mental break.
Witnesses told police that the man was riding atop or on the side of the train around 8:20 a.m. when he fell off near the Prospect Park station in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
Police said they couldn’t definitively say he was subway surfing, but witnesses described him as erratic, with an MTA employee telling the New York Post the victim was “going nuts on the train” when he started surfing.
“He was in his 50s or 60s, not a kid,” the worker said.
The victim’s jacket reportedly became tangled on a signal pole, causing him to fall from the train, which then ran over him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
He remains unidentified and his age is unclear, police said. The medical examiner will determine his cause of death.
The incident caused "severe" disruptions on the B and Q lines in Brooklyn, the MTA said.
The man's death came about a week after a 14-year-old boy was killed subway surfing on an F train near the Avenue N station in Midwood.