By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/7/2026
Category: Transportation Safety / Worker Safety / MTA Accountability
NEW YORK CITY, NY – Federal investigators are examining how a New York City Transit construction flagger was struck and killed by a D train near Yankee Stadium, the second fatal subway-track incident involving a relatively new flagger in less than three years.
Moet McCullum, 41, was killed shortly after 11:30 p.m. Thursday near the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station in the Bronx. She was a Brooklyn mother of three and had worked for the transit system for 11 months.
McCullum was preparing to place warning lights for a work crew when a southbound train coming from the 167th Street station struck her, according to local reporting and statements from transit and union officials.
The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched investigators. New York City Transit and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are also reviewing the death.
Officials have not announced a cause. ABC7 reported that the train operator did not report seeing warning lights and was traveling at normal speed. NBC New York reported that union officials said the crew had protective gear, flashlights, vests and lamps. Those details remain part of an active investigation and do not establish fault.
The central questions are basic and urgent: where McCullum and the train were when warnings should have been visible, whether the work zone was protected under required procedures, what the train operator could see, and whether supervision or training failed.
The death follows the November 2023 killing of Hilarion Joseph, 57, another construction flagger with less than a year on the job. He was struck by a D train near 34th Street-Herald Square. A separate flagger suffered severe head injuries in a June 2024 incident.
The NTSB later found that Joseph was in the path of the train for reasons it could not determine. It also identified ineffective New York City Transit oversight and insufficient enforcement of rules and procedures as contributing factors.
That history raises a broader accountability issue. A fatality can be caused by a chain of errors rather than one act. Investigators must determine whether the system corrected the weaknesses identified after the earlier death and whether those protections reached newer workers in the field.
New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow called McCullum’s death heartbreaking and said the agency was investigating. TWU Local 100 said it would work with the NTSB, its own safety team and a track-safety task force to reconstruct what happened.
For McCullum’s family, the investigation cannot undo the loss. Its public value will depend on whether investigators identify the conditions that put her in danger and whether the MTA makes changes that can be measured, enforced and sustained.
Until the evidence is complete, no individual should be blamed. But the transit system has an immediate duty to explain how a worker assigned to protect others from an oncoming train became the person the train struck.
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