By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — A woman killed by an uptown 6 train while trying to retrieve her gym bag from the tracks Thursday was identified as Rose Mankos of Manhattan, police said Friday.
Mankos, 48, a Stuyvesant Town resident, was desperately trying to climb back onto the platform at the 77th Street station when the train hit her just after 3:30 p.m.
“The train was coming into the station and [the conductor] was blowing the horn over and over again," said Celeste Arthur, who was in the first car of the train. "And then we felt the impact.”
Emergency medical workers responded to the scene and pronounced Mankos dead, police said.
"She had one choice to make and seconds to make it," witness Alfonso McGruder, 55, of the Bronx, told the New York Post. "She didn't make the one that would have saved her life.
"She tried to go under the platform because the train was bearing down on her. Then she tried to climb onto the platform, but she couldn't do that. Then she just froze," he told the Post.
A crowd of emergency workers and nervous parents on their cell phones gathered around the entrance to the station on 77th Street and Lexington Avenue after the incident.
“I can’t believe someone died," said Glenda Farr, 52, who was riding the 6 train home to Harlem. "I’ve never experienced something like this before.”
