Subway operator who struck and killed Bronx trackworker was going full speed despite warning

The subway operator who fatally struck a trackworker in the Bronx was warned a work crew was on the tracks ahead — but later told the victim’s supervisor he still went at normal speed because he didn’t see any lights alerting him to their presence, according to an internal report.

The operator’s train struck Moet McCullum, 41, who was setting up flagging lights on the tracks between 167th St. and 161st St. along the D line in Highbridge about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, MTA officials said.

The crew sent out an “advance flagger,” stationed at 167th St. directly before the work zone, whose job it was to warn oncoming train operators of workers up ahead.

And that flagger did so, according to what the crew’s supervisor said in the MTA’s preliminary report, which was obtained by the Daily News.

Even without seeing any flagging lights, after receiving the warning from the advance flagger, the operator should have traveled at restricted speed and used extreme caution until reaching the next station, a source familiar with subway operations said.

The crew was out of visual range of the advance flagger and so should have, as a matter of protocol, told the rail control center to hold all train service until the flags were set up, a source told The News. They did not do so, the source said.

The crew also had a lookout, who descended onto the tracks at the north end of the 161st St. station, followed by a train service supervisor, then by two construction flaggers, one of them McCullum, according to the report.

The train service supervisor said he he felt the wind, heard a train coming around the curve and saw headlights, and the lookout blew the whistle for everyone to clear up, or get off the tracks, the report states.

McCullum, a mother of three, froze and was fatally struck, according to the train service supervisor’s account in the report.

The train service supervisor also stated that he spoke to the train’s operator, who told him he’d been warned verbally by the advance flagger of the presence of the work crew, according to the report.

MTA spokesman Tim Minton said multiple investigations into McCullum’s death are underway, including one by the National Transportation Safety Board and a joint probe by union officials and New York City Transit’s Office of System Safety.

“The facts will be determined and then any necessary actions will be taken,” Minton said. “There is no higher priority than safety, and we are confident that the investigations will proceed and comprehensively determine what happened.”

McCullum had only worked for the MTA for 11 months. She usually worked as a train conductor but was assigned to track maintenance on Thursday, her family says.

“The (operator) was told that there was flaggers in the tunnel before he left the station. He still proceeded to go in the tunnel full speed,” said Thomas Tyrell, McCullum’s brother-in-law, who’s married to her twin sister. “It was said he didn’t see the yellow, but when you’re going through the tunnel and you know there’s flaggers, slow down. You’re supposed to be driving slow. And he didn’t do that. He just came in full speed.”

“He wasn’t supposed to be going too fast,” he added. “Simple.”

“Flagging” — the act of warning oncoming trains that there are track workers up ahead — is regarded as among the more dangerous tasks in subway track work.

NYC Transit worker Hilarion Joseph was also in his first year on the job when he was struck by a D train and killed while flagging for a track-cleaning crew in November 2023.

Another flagger, not publicly identified, suffered severe head trauma in 2024 after he was hit by an out-of-service F train in Brooklyn.

Both incidents were cited in a scathing Federal Transit Administration assessment in 2024, which demanded that the MTA improve its safety procedures and that the state’s Public Transportation Safety Board step up its oversight of New York City Transit.

The MTA appealed that report, saying the findings mischaracterized the agency’s safety record.