Woman killed by subway train trying to retrieve her purse.

A woman was crushed to death by an oncoming subway train at the 77th Street Station in Manhattan this afternoon after she jumped on the tracks to retrieve her dropped purse, police said. The horrific incident occurred on the crowded northbound platform shortly before 4 p.m. when the woman, described by police as 48-years-old, somehow ended up on the tracks as a train barreled towards her.
Can you only imagine the feeling this woman was feeling at that very moment as the train is approaching…? But what to do as the train comes closer and closer?
As the No. 6 train headed towards the woman, onlookers screamed to her to lie down between the tracks.
The fear, the desperation…
The motorman sounded his horn eight times to warn her, witnesses said.
The confusion, the terror…
Other witnesses said it appeared that she was trying to climb back up..
What to do? the train getting closer…
The woman then pressed herself against the platform wall — which only provides several inches of space between the wall and the train
And that’s when her life ended. And then the real pandemonium ensued:
“All I saw was her head sticking out. She was stuck where the door is,” she said. It was chaos on the platform as straphangers shrieked with horror upon seeing the shredded parts of her body, witnesses said.
Why don’t people just pay attention? Is it ever really worth to put yourself in such a risk. Oh the horror…
The woman, Rose M. Mankos, was a lawyer who had previously worked for the state, the authorities
Rose M. Mankos
25 Beaver St Rm 888
New York, NY 10004
Police Identify Woman Killed by Subway Train
By AL BAKER and CARA BUCKLEY
Updated, 2:57 p.m.
The 48-year-old woman who was crushed to death by a subway train on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Thursday afternoon has been identified as Rose M. Mankos, the authorities said. She was a lawyer who had previously worked for the state.
Ms. Mankos, who was dressed in athletic-style clothing, jumped into the track bed at East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue at about 3:45 p.m. to retrieve her black-and-gray nylon shoulder bag, which had fallen there.
But witnesses said a northbound No. 6 train bore down on her and struck her before she could hoist herself back onto the platform.
When emergency responders found her, Ms. Mankos had severe injuries to her face and skull, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Her identification was later discovered inside her bag, which was found lying in the track bed, and the police notified her brother, Joseph.
Also in the bag was “gym clothing and deodorant,” said a law enforcement official.
Ms. Mankos lived at 250 First Avenue, just north of East 14th Street, in Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan. She was a former senior court analyst at the state office court administration’s Division of Continuing Legal Education, last working there in February 2008. She graduated from New York University Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 2001.
Reached at his home in North Bergen, N.J., Ms. Mankos’s 82-year-old father, Robert Mankos, said Friday that he hardly begun to process his daughter’s death, and that he had already felt stretched past his limit from caring for his wife, who has Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.
“I felt like 60 before, I feel like 105 now,” he said.
Rose Mankos lived by herself and had never married, but loved cats. She often visited her mother at a nursing home in New Jersey, Mr. Mankos said.
He said he had not seen much of his daughter lately. When the medical examiner called, asking him to come to the city to identify Ms. Mankos’s body, he realized he could not bear the ordeal. “It’s too much,” he said
Instead his son, who had traveled from Pittsburgh, was on his way Friday to identify the body.
Mr. Mankos could not fathom why his daughter jumped onto the subway tracks. “I guess she dropped her purse,” he said, “Except you never do that, never.”
The family was planning a small private service in the coming days.
“It’s too late now,” Mr. Mankos said. “I’ll be praying for the rest of my life, until I die.”
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Sad news today, as Rose Mankos, a 48-year-old New York City woman, was crushed to death by a subway car in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Mankos was a lawyer who had previously worked for the state of New York.
According to reports, Mankos jumped down into the tracks while attempting to grab her shoulder bag, which had fallen down. But before she could hoist herself back up onto the platform, the No. 6 subway train struck and killed the woman.
She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her father, when contacted by the New York Times, expressed his immese grief by saying, "I felt like 60 before, I feel like 105 now."
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2010/03/woman-killed-by-subway-train-trying-to-retrieve-her-purse/
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/woman_crushed_to_death_on_subway_9Z15Jbow2Bk4kdbgNCD2BO
http://www.zimbio.com/Rose+Mankos/articles/qL8QhZ-3U5r/Rose+Mankos+Killed+NYC+Subway