{"id":347930,"date":"2026-09-16T02:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/347930\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T02:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:04:27","slug":"2-former-rutgers-students-killed-in-nyc-subway-tragedy-identified-as-close-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/347930\/","title":{"rendered":"2 former Rutgers students killed in NYC subway tragedy identified as close friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two 24-year-old New Jersey residents killed when they were struck by a subway train in Manhattan early Sunday<\/a> were longtime friends and former Rutgers University students who were beginning their careers.<\/p>\n

Malaika Chitre, of the Dayton section of South Brunswick, and Navam Kaul, of Sayreville, were killed when they were struck by a train at the Spring Street station shortly after 3 a.m., according to police and a report in the New York Post.<\/a><\/p>\n

New York City police said officers responded to the station at about 3:14 a.m. and found a 24-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man on the roadbed after the two had been struck by a train. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

The NYPD does not publicly identify people killed in incidents that are not considered crimes, a department spokesperson told NJ.com.<\/p>\n

Chitre and Kaul were identified in multiple published reports and in a statement from a Rutgers spokesperson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are saddened to learn of the tragic death of these two former students,\u201d said Dory Devlin, assistant vice president of news and media relations at Rutgers. <\/p>\n

Devlin said university records show Chitre received a bachelor of science degree in May 2024 from Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences. <\/p>\n

Kaul attended the Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick from fall 2020 to spring 2024 but did not receive a degree, Devlin said. <\/p>\n

Sajid Qureshi, Kaul\u2019s neighbor in Sayreville, told the New York Post he was shocked to learn of the deaths. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a financial analyst, doing everything right. From what I understand she was doing well, too \u2013 good people doing so well, with their whole lives ahead of them. It\u2019s just so sad,\u201d Qureshi said.<\/p>\n

Both Chitre and Kaul had extensive ties to New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Chitre graduated from South Brunswick High School in 2020 and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in public health with a minor in business administration from Rutgers University in 2024, according to her LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She was working as a quality operations specialist for Acadia Pharmaceuticals and in August began pursuing a doctor of pharmacy degree at Temple University\u2019s School of Pharmacy.<\/p>\n

Kaul graduated from Sayreville War Memorial High School in 2020 and studied finance at Rutgers Business School through 2024, according to his LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He had been working as a financial data analyst for Bloomberg since May 2025.<\/p>\n

The two were longtime friends, according to published reports.<\/p>\n

An MTA incident report, obtained by the New York Daily News,<\/a> said the train operator saw two people on the tracks and attempted to stop the train.<\/p>\n

Authorities have not publicly said why the two were on the tracks. The NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two 24-year-old New Jersey residents killed when they were struck by a subway train in Manhattan early Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-347930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}