Subway motorman has fatal heart attack while driving G train

金牛银熊

A subway motorman had a fatal heart attack operating a G train yesterday morning, just days after a track worker was electrocuted on the job.

Domenick Occhiogrosso had just pulled the train out of the Court Square station in Long Island City, Queens, when he was stricken shortly after 8 a.m., transit officials said.

The train's emergency brakes were activated when Occhiogrosso stopped applying pressure to the throttle, a safety mechanism grimly known as the "dead man's switch."

The train's conductor discovered Occhiogrosso, 50, of Brooklyn, unconscious when the train stopped. Efforts to revive the father of a teenage daughter failed, and the veteran transit worker was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital Center, authorities said.

"He was an unsung hero," said motorman Richie Borish, a former union official, recalling how Occhiogrosso evacuated passengers from his train through a dark tunnel during the 2007 flood that crippled the system. "He was a good guy."

Track crew supervisor James Knell, 45, was electrocuted Monday morning when he fell onto the electrified third rail on the elevated Rockaway Shuttle.

"He was more than anything in the world to me," Knell's devastated wife, Jackie, 39, said yesterday. "He was the best friend anyone could have."

The Knells dated in high school and married two years ago after being apart for decades. She last saw him Sunday as he headed out to work an overtime shift.

"We gave each other a kiss goodbye, and he took his coffee cup and left," said Jackie, in tears.

The last two transit workers to die on the job were killed three years ago this month. Trackman Daniel Boggs was struck by a train on April 24, 2007, and five days later, Marvin Franklin, also a track worker, was hit and killed.

Such deaths are stark reminders of the hazards transit workers face in the 24-hour system, transit workers said yesterday, lamenting that they receive far less attention than when other civil servants, like policemen, firemen or sanitation workers, die in the line of duty.

Under NYC Transit's own safety rules, Knell shouldn't have been working near the uncovered third rail because of the wet conditions that existed, union officials said. It rained on and off through the shift.

Transit officials declined to comment on the investigation.