The grieving family of an MTA trackworker killed by an oncoming D train in the Bronx is demanding a full and thorough investigation into the fatal crash that tore a cherished mom away from her three children and twin sister.
“There’s no way to go around it. We just want the truth,” Thomas Tyrell, the brother-in-law of MTA worker Moet McCullum told the Daily News Saturday. Tyrell is married to Moet’s twin sister, Monet. “We just want justice and the truth, and something has to happen.”
“There’s just no way a person can go to work and just (get) killed at work,” he said.
McCullum, 41, was setting up flagging lights on the tracks between 167th St. and 161st St. along the D line in Highbridge when she was hit by an oncoming train shortly after 11:30 p.m. Thursday, MTA officials said.
The flagging lights warn oncoming trains to a work crew on the line, but the D train operator who hit her reported not seeing any such lights before striking McCullum, according to sources.
The track worker was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where she died.
“I’m sooo hurt, angry and confused!” her sister, an MTA conductor, wrote on Facebook Friday. “My heart is literally shattered into pieces. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d be on this earth without you.”
“Now who ima call every day? Who gonna call me?? My heart is hurting. I hope I can live with this broken heart!” she wrote.
Courtesy of family
MTA worker Moet McCullum was killed by a D train in the Bronx. (Courtesy of family)
Tyrell said 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.
“I don’t know if she switched to flagging or if she was trying it out,” said Tyrell, who added that train operators on the D line were told a scheduled construction project and track maintenance were taking place.
“(The driver) was told that there was flaggers in the tunnel before he left the station,” he said. “He still proceeded to go in the tunnel at full speed. 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.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be going too fast,” Tyrell added. “Simple.”
According to some accounts, McCullum froze when she saw the train barreling toward her and couldn’t get out of the way in time, but Tyrell said if the train was going at full speed, none of that would have mattered.
“If she froze up like that (it) means she saw it and it was just too late,” he said. “It just scares me to know that the last thing she saw.”
McCullum grew up in Brooklyn and had three children, a pair of twin sons, 19, and a 21-year-old daughter. She also doted on her 2-year-old grandchild, relatives said.
“(She) always kept a smile on her face. She joked a lot. She was just basically fun to be around,” Tyrell said. “She just was a cool person. Everybody loved her. She had a lot of family that love her and she had a lot of friends that love her.”
The news of her death has hit the family like a sledgehammer, he said.
“The people that’s taking it the worst is her mom and my wife, her twin sister,” he said. “That was her best friend. They text all day, go out together, they eat together. They did everything together.”
“We’re just grieving, devastated,” he said. “As far as her kids, it (hasn’t) really hit them yet. They cry, but it’s not really hitting.”
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
A D train. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
Both the MTA and the federal National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the fatal crash.
MTA and union officials said being a flagger is “inherently dangerous work.”
“When you’re working under live service, keeping New York moving, you’re going to have issues,” John Chiarello, head of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said Friday. Chiarello rose to union leadership after being a signal maintainer for NYC Transit.
“Not only was a life lost, but the train crew that were involved will be traumatized for the rest of their lives,” Chiarello added.
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.