500 feet from where I live...

Pushed in Front of Subway, Man Is Killed : New York Times

A Queens bakery worker was killed yesterday morning when a man his family described as a friend and former co-worker threw him into the path of an oncoming subway train during a fight, the police said.

The killing occurred just before 5 a.m., several hours after the victim, Edison Guzman, 22, of Richmond Hill, had finished his shift at the bakery, his relatives said.

Yesterday evening, detectives arrested a Brooklyn man in Mr. Guzman's death. Charges against the man, Richie Molina, 19, of Humboldt Street in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, were pending last night.

Patricio Bermeo, an uncle of Mr. Guzman's, said last night that his nephew and the suspect formerly worked together at the bakery and that they still "hung out regularly."

"They were friends," he said.

"Maybe they were fighting, maybe they were playing," Mr. Bermeo said.

The authorities said it was unclear what had provoked the fight, which they said had begun under the elevated tracks of the No. 7 line near the 52nd Street station, on Roosevelt Avenue in the Sunnyside section of Queens.

Mr. Guzman and Mr. Molina then went upstairs onto the outbound platform and continued to fight, the police said. As a train entered the station, the killer shoved Mr. Guzman onto the tracks, according to a statement to detectives from the train's motorman, whose name was not disclosed. The train consisted of 11 cars, each weighing almost 37,000 pounds, according to Charles F. Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit.

It was unclear exactly how close Mr. Guzman was to the train when he was pushed, but it is impossible for a train entering a station at the customary speed to stop suddenly.

"He was all twisted up. It was bad," said Paul Cabrera, 35, a track worker at the scene.

William Schultz, 54, a transit maintenance supervisor who was working in the station, said he had run to the platform after he heard a woman screaming.

Mr. Guzman's father, Raul Guzman, identified a cellphone found at the scene as belonging to his son, according to Mr. Bermeo.

Mr. Bermeo said that the elder Mr. Guzman had been shown video by the police of the assailant fleeing the station and had identified the man as Mr. Molina. The police said detectives had obtained surveillance video from both the station and a nearby store.

At the victim's home on 133rd Street, Mr. Bermeo, 41, said Mr. Guzman's family was from Cuenca, Ecuador, and moved to New York City 18 years ago.

For the last four years, Mr. Guzman worked at Pain d'Avignon, a bakery in Astoria, with his father, Mr. Bermeo said. He worked until midnight on Saturday after switching shifts so he could have Thanksgiving off and spend the day with his family, Mr. Bermeo added.

"He's young; he doesn't give a problem," Mr. Bermeo said. "He goes to school. He wanted to be somebody." Mr. Guzman had a girlfriend and enjoyed bowling and playing pool after work, Mr. Bermeo said

Another uncle, Luis Guzman, 44, said: "My brother called me in my home and said, 'My son is dead.' We can't believe it."

Last night, no one answered the door at the apartment where Mr. Molina lives with his mother and two sisters. The building superintendent, Arnold Cruz, 46, said of Mr. Molina: "If he said a handful of words, it was a lot. He was a quiet kid."

The death halted service on the 7 line from 4:59 a.m. until 9:05 a.m., when outbound train service resumed, said Mark Groce, a transit spokesman.

It was very quiet this morning at 7:30 when I went to buy the New York Times and the New York Post. I chatted with my newspaper seller. She said that from the time she arrived the train had not been running. My family and I went off to our retreat at the St. Ignatius Retreat House in Manhasset and then we learned what happened.

This part of the subway is an elevated train. As the television account put it graphically, the body parts rained down from the tracks 30 feet overhead.