A New York City Transit construction flagger was struck and killed by a D train Thursday night in the Bronx, MTA officials said.
New York City Transit president Demetrius Crichlow identified the flagger as Moet McCullum. She was struck by the southbound train at the 161 Street-Yankee Stadium station after 11:30 p.m.
“This is a difficult day. Last night, we tragically lost a member of our MTA family… I ask that we all keep Ms. McCullum and her family in our thoughts and prayers,” Crichlow said in a statement.
A construction flagger signals train operators to stop or slow down near ongoing track work.
An internal report of the incident obtained by Gothamist said that a supervisor working with McCullum “felt the wind and heard a train coming around the curve, saw headlights, and the lookout blew the whistle for everyone to clear.” McCullum, the report stated, “froze.”
After McCullum was struck, the train operator told an MTA official he’d been warned about flaggers on the track but hadn’t seen any warning lights, prompting him to drive the train at normal speed, according to the internal report.
In a separate document, the MTA pulled all construction flaggers off the tracks for 24 hours for retraining on safety.
In 2023 an MTA flagger died after being struck by a D train near the 34th Street-Herald Square subway station.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was “launching a go team” to investigate Thursday’s incident. Following the 2023 incident, the Federal Transit Administration sent a set of directives to New York state’s Public Transportation Safety Board, calling on the MTA to improve its safety protocols.
The directives cited dozens of “near-miss” events where MTA employees were at risk of being struck by moving trains just in 2023.