Friday, January 20, 2006

Man Found on Q Train; Probably Died Hours Earlier

Man Found on Q Train; Probably Died Hours Earlier


By SEWELL CHAN
Published: January 20, 2006

A 64-year-old man was found dead during the morning rush yesterday inside a subway train, the authorities said, and had apparently been riding for more than six hours before anyone noticed.

The man, whom the police identified as Eugene M. Reilly of Midwood, Brooklyn, was a mail handler who had worked for the Postal Service for 35 years.

Mr. Reilly's body was found in the last car of a northbound Q train near the 14th Street-Union Square station at 7:11 a.m., according to New York City Transit.

The passengers were let off, the police and emergency medical workers were called, and the train was moved to Times Square at 7:28 a.m. while the authorities investigated. Northbound N and Q trains were rerouted to the local track, slowing those lines and also the R and W lines, which use the same track. At 9:40 a.m., the Q train in which Mr. Reilly had been found was moved to an unused track north of 57th Street, and normal service resumed.

If Mr. Reilly boarded a Brooklyn-bound Q train at 34th Street at 1 a.m. after going straight to the station from work, as was his routine, he could have traveled back and forth on the line six times before someone realized he had died, according to the published schedule for the subway line. It takes 50 to 54 minutes for the Q to travel between its northern terminus, at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, and its southern terminus, at Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island.

The police said there was no sign of trauma or foul play. An autopsy is scheduled for today. Mr. Reilly was overweight and had had heart bypass surgery about a decade ago, said his wife, Patricia Reilly.

Mr. Reilly worked on weekdays, from 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., at the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, a huge mail center on Ninth Avenue between 28th and 30th Streets, a Postal Service spokeswoman said.

His wife said he always went straight home from work. The ride on the Q train from 34th Street in Manhattan to Kings Highway in Brooklyn usually takes 35 minutes.

Mrs. Reilly said in a telephone interview that she did not usually wake up when her husband came home. When she awoke about 7 a.m. to prepare for work and noticed his absence, she said, she panicked and called several hospitals. In the afternoon, she identified her husband's body at Bellevue Hospital Center.

"I didn't even get to say goodbye to him," she said.

Mr. Reilly grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn. He served in the Army from 1963 to 1965 and was a military policeman in Vietnam, his wife said. He is survived by two daughters, 21 and 20, and a son, 16.

Yosef Y. Zaklikowski, who lived next door to the Reillys until November, described Mr. Reilly as quiet and private. "He kept his property very clean," Mr. Zaklikowski said.

Compared with deaths on the tracks, deaths inside subways and on buses are quite rare. In June 1999, Ignacio Mendez, 36, a migrant farm worker from Ecuador, was found dead on a No. 1 train on the Upper West Side during the morning rush. His body was not identified for three days.