Two people were killed after sitting on subway tracks as a train approached a station in downtown Manhattan, police said.
The 24-year-old man from Sayreville, New Jersey, and 24-year-old woman from Dayton, New York, were on the rails at Spring Street station shortly before 3.14am on Sunday, when a southbound Number 4 train entered the station.
Footage shared online appeared to show the pair looking towards the approaching train. The motorman applied the emergency brakes, but the train struck them.
Officers responding to reports of two people being hit found both unresponsive. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
Their identities have not been released while authorities notify their families. The station was seemingly closed in the aftermath.
Investigators are examining whether the pair had been drinking before they went on to the tracks, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
The deaths come just over a week after Moet McCullum, a 41-year-old Metropolitan Transportation Authority construction flagger, was fatally struck while working on the tracks at 161st Street-Yankee Stadium.
Ms McCullum, from Brooklyn, was preparing to set up warning lights for a work crew when she was hit by a southbound D train at about 11.30pm on September 3. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating that death, alongside union officials and New York City Transit’s Office of System Safety.
“There is no higher priority than safety, and we are confident that the investigations will proceed and comprehensively determine what happened,” MTA spokesman Tim Minton said.
