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Second man run over by subway, survives

By Matthew Sweeney and Marlene Naanes | msweeney@am-ny.com

6:49 PM EDT, May 28, 2008

For the second time in as many days a man was run over by a subway car yesterday and survived.

Just before 5 a.m. a southbound G train was pulling into the Metropolitan Avenue station in Williamsburg when the operator saw a man lying in the trough between the tracks, transit officials said. The first car passed over the young man before coming to a halt.

The man, whose name was not released by officials, was taken to Woodhull Hospital where he was listed in stable condition with a head injury. It was not clear why he was on the tracks. A transit spokesperson said initial reports stated that the 22-year-old man may have been intoxicated.

"It happens," said Charles Seaton, a transit spokesman.

Yesterday, Abdul Haque, 55, fell to the tracks just as an F train pulled into the Delancey Street station. Three cars of the Queens-bound train passed over him before the operator was able to stop it. Haque, a Lower East Side resident, was in fair condition yesterday at Bellevue Hospital where he was surrounded by family, said one of his daughters, who declined to give her name. In a phone interview, she said that her father, who works in a Queens factory, is improving since the accident. Her father was very lucky, she said.

"He's very bubbly, very nice," said a family friend, who also declined to give her name.

Haque, a native of Bangladesh, has five children, the friend added.

There's no accounting for two such bizarre accidents in two days. There are so many different types of track that there's no telling where in the system the trough would be deep enough for someone to survive getting run over after falling from the platform

"The safest place to be is standing back on the platform," Seaton said.

--Megan Stride contributed to this story