A 34-year-old man died on Friday after falling to the subway tracks amid an early-morning altercation at a station on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a second man was taken into custody, the police said.
Just before 2 a.m., officers responded to a 911 call about a man being pushed onto the tracks at the station at 96th Street and Broadway, the police said. At the time, two officers who were assigned to the station saw a fight occurring on the platform.
The officers rushed to stop the fight but the man was already on the southbound tracks and had sustained a head injury, the police said. He was removed from the tracks and taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at about 11 a.m., the police said. His name was not immediately released pending notification of his family.
The police said their investigation was continuing and that a second man, 28, was in custody. He had not been charged as of Friday afternoon.
Witnesses told the police that the two men had been arguing on a southbound train, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. The dispute began when the older man objected to something the younger man was doing on the train, the law enforcement official said.
When the train pulled into the 96th Street station, the official said, the argument escalated into a physical altercation and the younger man pushed the older man onto the platform.
At that point, the officers rushing from the nearby platform saw the younger man push the older man onto the track, the law enforcement official said.
It was not immediately clear whether the two men knew each other, the police said.
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
