The Emerald Isle Immigration Center of New York has made a plea to remain alert while using the subway, after two Irish soccer fans had a close brush with tragedy at the Times Square station on Sunday evening.
“We would recommend everyone to exercise caution in the subway if they are new to New York or unfamiliar with the train system, particularly when socializing,” Siobhan Dennehy, Executive Director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center (EIIC) said in a statement.
The warning comes after two unidentified Irish football revelers fell onto the subway tracks at Times Square after the Ireland-Croatia Euro soccer match last weekend. Photos of the aftermath of the incident were captured by eyewitness Raphael Orlove.
Orlove (22) first noticed the commotion across the subway tracks when he arrived at the 1/2/3 uptown subway platform on Sunday evening shortly before 8pm.
“I saw a couple of figures standing around and I saw people lifting a body up and someone jumping up and being pulled back up on the platform,” Orlove told the Irish Voice.
“I could already see that people were calling the police.”
“Immediately I pulled out my camera and started talking pictures.”
A series of images published on the website Jalopnik show six Irish football fans, each dressed in the Irish team colors, standing around a shoeless young woman, lying on the platform beside an Irish tri-color.
Orlove wrote a detailed account on the website explaining what he saw when he arrived on the scene.
“There is a young girl, practically my age, who is lying flat on her back wearing a green shirt (Go Ireland!) and this intensely bright shade of red lipstick. Her friends and some strangers were standing over her, fanning her, keeping her awake.”
“I look at the girl soccer fan and I realize she doesn't have red lipstick — that's blood.
“Her hand is bleeding, too, and there are thick grease marks over her arms and her head where she fell,” he wrote.
Dressed in an Ireland jersey and yellow pants, the other man who fell on the tracks was photographed covered in grime putting his flip-flops back on.
According to bystanders the Irish man and woman fell onto the tracks at the same time before two bystanders jumped onto the tracks and pulled them to safety.
One of the brave strangers, only known as Doug, stayed on the scene after pulling the soccer fans to safety. The other man apparently left the scene immediately following the rescue.
After the brunette came to, she was placed in a wheelchair by emergency personnel who led the group away. It was then that Orlove overheard the girl tell a police officer they lived in the Bronx.
According to a source, one of the young men involved was spotted in a Bronx bar later that night.
Roy Hiller, a New York based personal injury lawyer advises that if you witness someone falling onto the subway tracks you should first look around the platform for an emergency official.
“Always look for somebody,” he told the Irish Voice.
“If you are at a station where there is nobody there, you have to exercise your best judgment on what to do next.”
“There are a lot of different reasons why people can fall on the tracks,” Hiller added.
In the wake of Sunday’s incident an MTA spokesman advised all passengers to stay back from the edge of the platform.
Last year, 147 people fell onto the subway tracks. Close to 50 were fatal, according to the MTA spokesman.
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