Saturday, July 08, 2006

MBTA Victim: Minimal Update

The Jamaica Plain Gazette has another smattering of information on the fellow killed on the Orange Line tracks on June 26th. The short is not online, in the print edition only.

Eventually last week, the Globe did run a short with the man's name, hometown and age. Maybe they're waiting for his family to pay for a death notice.

They cite information from MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo. This is the same source quoted by the Boston Globe for the original and follow-up shorts.

Media Outage: The Globe has been terribly about this and the Herald has ignored it. They are getting like FoxNews it hitting heavy on injured children and kidnapped blonde women. A man died here and it's a yawn. By the bye, I sent email to the Globe's city editor, asking when they would do some original reporting on this rather than passing along the scrawny MBTA press releases. No response yet...

According to the Gazette:
  • No witnesses saw him get on the tracks.
  • He may have come from either Forest Hills or Green Street stops.
  • The T's guessing that high walls and fences would have prevented any other entry to the tracks.
  • He was lying on the tracks motionless.
  • He may or may not have been dead when the train hit him.
  • He may have died from third-rail electricity, the impact or both.
  • He had injuries from both possibilities.
  • Another driver saw him on the tracks and called it in, but not in time to stop Northbound traffic.
We don't know the usual journalism requirements. His name is what the T released and does not have an online search result of any type. There has been no death notice or obit that we can find. There are no details -- work, family, reason to be on the track, or such on top of all the unknowns from above.

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