Woman Run Over by NYC Trains 3 Times, Survives

22-year-old manages to roll into small space between platform, train
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 30, 2014 8:25 AM CDT
Woman Run Over by NYC Trains 3 Times, Survives
A shot of a NYC subway station.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

New York City's subway system claimed 53 lives in 2013; a 22-year-old narrowly, and miraculously, avoided being added to 2014's tally yesterday morning. Mary Downey, a 22-year-old Irish immigrant living in the Bronx, fell onto the tracks at a Times Square station around 6am; she was, in the New York Post's telling, drunk and staggering. The fall not only broke Downey's shoulder: It also put her in the path of an oncoming N train. She didn't have time to exit the rails, so she apparently "rolled to the platform and was in between the platform and the train when the train came into the station," according to an FDNY official.

And that was apparently just the first of three close calls. Police say a second train drove over her, as did a third, though the operator of that train saw Downey waving for help and was able to stop the train after just part of it passed over her. She was removed by paramedics and taken to a hospital where her shoulder injury was treated. The Post spotted her "wiping tears from her eyes" as she was discharged. (Earlier this month, an allegedly drunk 22-year-old fell asleep on Alabama train tracks, and had a close call herself.)

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