Two men who were believed to be homeless were found dead on the New York City subway trains in less than 24 hours this past weekend.
The first incident took place Friday night at the 168th St. station in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The New York Police Department (NYPD) said that transit workers discovered a dead 56-year-old man on a C train while at the station.
The second incident took place Saturday morning around 8:20 a.m., when a rider called 911 after finding an unresponsive body. When emergency medical services (EMS) responders arrived, they found 61-year-old Robert Mangual dead on the floor of the 4 train at Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue station.
A spokesperson for the city medical examiner’s office said Monday that a cause of death has not been determined for either man.
In a similar incident last month, a 62-year-old man was found dead on a subway train near the Astoria section of Queens.
Subway ridership has gone down more than 90 percent due to the coronavirus, but there has been an increase in homeless people using subway cars as a shelter during the pandemic.
This has prompted the city to shut down its subways between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. starting May 6 for disinfecting.
“Our customers should not have to board a car that’s being used as a shelter,” Acting New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg said last week.
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