A bewildering confluence of mishaps befell the East 125th Street 4/5/6 station in Harlem this afternoon as one man died after he fell off the train while pooping between cars, and another seriously injured man climbed onto the platform from the tracks with no memory of how he’d gotten there. The two have nothing to do with one another, but it’s not hard to see why authorities initially thought they had gotten into a fight that spilled onto the subway tracks. Occam’s razor says the simplest explanation is usually the right one, and the explanation for the carnage that centered on one subway station Tuesday is definitely not simple, expected, or anywhere near normal.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the injured mystery-man came climbing up from the tracks to the uptown platform. The man, who the New York Post identified as Manuce Dulcio, 50, had a broken pelvis, a deep cut on his buttocks, and another cut on his leg. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten onto the tracks, or how he was hurt, though cops thought he might have been hit by a train. A source told the Post he was “very intoxicated,” which really doesn’t come as a big surprise.
Then, a few minutes later, the other man fell off a moving 6-train on which he had been defecating between cars. “The victim, 31, was struck by the 6-train as it was leaving the station,” DNAinfo reported, citing NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “He was pronounced dead at the scene.”
This has been a rough couple of months for people dying on the Subway tracks, which is ostensibly why the Transport Workers Union Local 100 has undertaken a campaign to get motormen to slow down when entering stations. That practice probably wouldn’t have made any difference here, since the man fell as the train was leaving the station.
