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Man Killed by Subway Train in Williamsburg after FIght on Platform

By DNAinfo Staff on March 24, 2012 2:12pm

Joshua Basin was crushed by an L train at the Bedford Avenue station after falling on to the tracks in a brawl.
Joshua Basin was crushed by an L train at the Bedford Avenue station after falling on to the tracks in a brawl.
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Flickr/bitchcakesnyc

 

By Amy Zimmer and William J. Gorta

A brawl at a Williamsburg subway stop that spilled on to the tracks ended with a young man being crushed by a train as he struggled to get back on the platform Friday night, police and witnesses said.

Joshua Basin, 20, was caught between the train and the platform edge by a Manhattan-bound L train as he tried to pull himself up, witnesses said.

A drunken man who had been pestering straphangers on a Brooklyn-bound train pushed Basin and another man out of the car at Bedford Avenue, telling them ,” It’s show time.  It’s show time,” a witness told DNAinfo.

A fight erupted, sending Basin and the drunk tumbling off the other side of the platform into the roadbed, witnesses said.

A drunken man started a fight at the Bedford Avenue L train station that knocked Joshua Basin on to the tracks were he was hit by an L train.
A drunken man started a fight at the Bedford Avenue L train station that knocked Joshua Basin on to the tracks were he was hit by an L train.
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Suzanne Ma

 The drunk, wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans and described as “very off” by a witness, managed to avoid the train and escape.

"He ran away," Basin’s mother Zena told the Daily News. "He left my son dead."

A witness said the disheveled drunk with “extremely dirty” fingernails had been “clearly looking for a fight.”

“He approached in a posturing kind of way,” a witness said.  “He was very creepy, smiling and laughing.”

No one could make out what the drunk was saying, but Basin could be heard telling the aggressor, “Stop it.  Stop it, man,” the witness said.

The witness lost sight of the men when they left the train, but she said, “The next thing was I heard people screaming and then I saw his [Basin’s] body sticking up out of the train.”

The slight Basin was not a fighter, his mother told the Daily News.

  "He would never hurt anyone," she told the paper.  "He was a good boy."