Star of the Week
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.”
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