Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

Seth Wenig/PA
New York

New York subway staff say break rooms and bathrooms being used to store bodies

Some staff said they have been traumatised by unexpectedly finding a body that is being stowed temporarily until a medical examiner arrives.

IT’S A LARGELY overlooked, but gory reality of the New York City subway system: When someone takes their life by jumping in front of a train, police need to find a place to put the body until a medical examiner truck arrives.

Sometimes, transit workers say, that place is their break room or bathroom. And naturally, they don’t like it. Some say they have been traumatised by unexpectedly coming upon a stowed body.

“The subway isn’t supposed to be New York City’s temporary morgue,” said John Samuelsen, president of Transport Workers Union International.

In one of the latest cases this week, the body of a man found on a Manhattan subway train after he apparently died of natural causes was bagged and stashed in an out-of-service employee bathroom.

Authorities had no immediate word on how long the man’s body was there. But station agents claim it can take hours before bodies are moved from employees-only areas. This increases the odds they’ll stumble upon them, said TWU Local 100 representative Derick Echevarria.

Workers have been “surprised and shocked by this”, Echevarria said. “These are places where people take breaks, eat food, store their clothes.”

Complaints

The union has received about a dozen complaints in the past year, including some alleging workers were exposed to messy remains, union officials say. Local 100 raised the issue with the Metropolitan Transit Authority twice in the same period, they add, but the complaints go back years.

LaShawn Jones, an 18-year MTA employee, said that about three years ago she complained when she arrived at work at an upper Manhattan train station to find police in an employee bathroom guarding a body bag.

She said she turned away and came back later after the bag was gone, only to find what appeared to be hair and traces of skin clogging a bathroom sink — what she presumed was human waste that responders had washed off.

“It was pieces of a scalp,” said the 52-year-old Jones. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. Are you kidding me?’ I was disgusted. They really need to find a better place to deal with this — for the sake of us and out of respect for the dead.”

The MTA and the New York Police Department do not deny workers have occasionally encountered the body bags. But they deny suggestions that it’s the result of an increase in suicides in the subways or longer response times by the medical examiner’s office.

The annual number of deaths of all kinds in the subways has held steady – there were about 50 last year – in an era of record ridership. And authorities say the average medical examiner response times are actually down so far this year by a half hour compared to the same period last year. It now takes slightly under two hours.

Funding

Police protocols call for officers to bag bodies, remove them to an area away from public view – preferably a utility room – and keep watch until they’re removed from the premises. The process can take more time if the victim dies on the tracks because that requires Emergency Service Unit officers to respond.

The MTA referred questions about the process to City Hall, which said in a statement that it had increased medical examiner funding by $11 million since 2014. That has allowed the office to add 127 positions.

“The medical examiner and NYPD are committed to reducing our response times even further to ensure both the humane treatment of the deceased and the health of subway workers and straphangers,” it said.

If you need to talk, contact:

  • Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
  • Aware 1800 804848 (depression, anxiety)
  • Pieta House 1800 247247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide, self-harm)
  • Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833634 (for ages 13 to 19)
  • Childline 1800 666666 (for under 18s)

Read: Manspreading is now banned on buses in Madrid>

Read: New York trials birth control for rats to tackle massive rodent population>

Author
Associated Foreign Press
Your Voice
Readers Comments
36
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Submit a report
    Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
    Thank you for the feedback
    Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

    Leave a commentcancel