A 41-year-old transit worker for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was struck and killed by a subway train late Thursday night, the police said on Friday.
The employee, Moet McCullum, was working on the tracks near River Avenue and East 161st Street in the Bronx, near the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station. Just after 11:30 p.m. on Thursday night, a southbound D train hit her, the police said. She was brought to Lincoln Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 12:42 a.m.
“This is a difficult day,” Demetrius Crichlow, the president of New York City Transit, a division of the M.T.A., said in a statement. “Last night, we tragically lost a member of our M.T.A. family.”
He added that the episode was under investigation. “This morning, I was at the hospital, at the scene and I met with her family,” he said.
Ms. McCullum was a mother of three, John V. Chiarello, the president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents workers on buses and subway lines, said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. She had been on the job for 11 months.
“Not only was a life lost, but the train crew that were involved will be traumatized for the rest of their lives by this absolute nightmare,” Mr. Chiarello said, later adding: “This is the human side of a 24-7 transit system.”
The last instance of an M.T.A. worker dying after being hit by a subway train was in November 2023, when Hilarion Joseph, 57, was struck at the 34th Street-Herald Square station by a northbound D train. Mr. Joseph and Ms. McCullum were both construction flaggers, who are tasked with notifying trains that workers are on the tracks by setting out lights or caution signs, Mr. Chiarello said, calling it “inherently dangerous work.”
Mr. Joseph’s death, combined with a number of close calls in 2023, led to the Federal Transit Administration ordering the M.T.A. to improve track safety, as unsafe conditions and practices were putting transit employees at growing risk.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement on Friday that it was putting together a “go team” to investigate the accident.
Molly Longman contributed reporting.
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