A wife is without her husband, and a family is without their father after a disagreement on a subway platform led to a man to being pushed in front of an oncoming subway train during rush hour October 17. 

Heriberto Quintana, 48, was on his way home to take his wife to her dialysis treatment. He was involved in an altercation that led to him being knocked onto the tracks and struck by an oncoming train. 

Police sources say that Quintana was standing on the platform of the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue 74th Street subway station in Queens, NYC, when he accidentally bumped into Carlos Garcia, 50, causing Garcia to lose control of his cell phone and drop it down on the tracks. Garcia demanded that Quintana lower himself onto the tracks to retrieve the fallen phone. Quintana refused to go, agitating Garcia, who started to fight with Quintana. The two began yelling at each other in Spanish as tension escalated. Garcia grabbed Quintana and pushed him over the platform’s edge and down to the tracks, where he was struck by the incoming Jamaica-bound F train. 

An MTA worker at the scene of the incident said that Quintana was still alive immediately after being struck. He was taken to Elmhurst Hospital and later pronounced dead. Subway goers and bystanders tried to restrain the suspect, but he was able to escape and hop on another train. Police were able to catch up with Garcia and apprehended him. He was charged with manslaughter. 

The incident is the ninth homicide in the NYC subway system this year, already breaking last year’s 25-year high record of eight murders. “Sadly, this is the new normal,” said a station cleaner, who has worked for the MTA for 15 years. “I’ve worked down here half my life. If it’s not a subway surfer, it’s a fight; if it’s not a fight, it’s a stabbing or a shooting.”

A subway rider summed up the concerns of riders and MTA employees, “No one should be dying on the subway, period,” he said. “This could have been anyone.”