Joseph Lynskey was quietly waiting for the New York subway on New Year’s Eve when someone shoved him from behind onto the tracks as a train pulled into the station.
Highly publicized horror stories such as Lynskey’s have had a chilling effect on many New Yorkers even as authorities say crime is down on the metro system and across the city.
Lynskey survived because he fell into a deep, recessed space under the train and between the tracks, and was not hit by the wheels, but rather the undercarriage.
Photo: AFP
“I knew instantly ... that somebody had pushed me and tried to kill me,” the music producer said of the attack at 18th Street subway station in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. “When I hit the tracks and I opened my eyes, the train was on top of me. It was so fast.”
He recalled thinking: “I’m going to get hit by the train and I’m going to die.”
A 45-year-old adopted New Yorker, he has not been able to return to the subway, used by 4 million people daily who flock to the sprawling network of 472 stations and more than 950km of track, running day and night.
When he looked around after falling onto the tracks, Lynskey recalled being just centimeters from the high-voltage rail that powers trains, and seeing his blood pooling on the rail bed.
He was left with a fractured skull, four broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.
“I knew that I had to remain calm. There was nobody on the platform answering my calls for help. For about 90 seconds, I was alone, screaming for help,” he said. “A woman started answering me ... a Good Samaritan. She asked me what my name was. She asked me if I could move. She asked me if I could wiggle my fingers and wiggle my toes to see if, I guess, if I was paralyzed, and I think she was trying to keep me awake.”
Within minutes firefighters, police and subway workers arrived, with two firefighters retrieving him from the tracks, having been trained to do so just days before.
Lynskey later met his rescuers to give them a hug and thank them properly.
His rescue was captured on film and widely shared on social media, with rescuers expressing surprise that he was alive once he was lifted through the gap between two carriages.
Lynskey still struggles to understand why his attacker, a 23-year-old man with criminal convictions and mental health issues, would want to harm him.
He chooses instead to focus his attention on the kindness of strangers, like those who have written to him from around the world to express solidarity.
Last year, 26 people were pushed or fell onto tracks, one of whom died, an increase of nine on 2023, police said.
Cases such as Lynskey’s, although rare, attract a disproportionate share of headlines and public awareness.
Another subway tragedy that shocked New Yorkers became front page news in May 2023 when Jordan Neely, an unhoused Michael Jackson impersonator who had struggled with psychiatric issues, was choked to death by former US marine Daniel Penny. Penny was charged with murder despite claiming he acted in self-defense when Neely became agitated, and a jury acquitted him.
Similarly shocking was the killing of a woman who was set alight by another passenger.
One rider, Marissa Keary, 24, said that she had “definitely heightened” her vigilance when riding the subway.
“If I have to wait, I’ll have my back against the wall and I’ll also stand near another woman,” she said.
Lynskey said that the subway operator could do more to make passengers feel safe.
“I think everyone deserves to feel safe when they go down into their commute,” he said.
Despite chronic issues with reliability and dirtiness, the subway remains the fastest way for the city’s 8 million people to crisscross the tightly packed urban jungle.
Authorities in the middle of last month stepped up police patrols at stations and on trains, while also steeping up mental health outreach and erecting barriers on the edges of some platforms.
Administrators said they hope that US President Donald Trump does not scrap a US$9 per car congestion charging scheme, despite his opposition to the measure which would be used to fund a US$65 billion subway overhaul bill, and the system’s US$48 billion debt pile.
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