A Train Derailment Survivor Sues The MTA For $5 Million

HARLEM, NY — Sheena Tucker, a Harlem resident unlucky enough to find herself aboard the southbound A train that went screeching off the rails and crashing into a tunnel wall Tuesday morning, will be suing the radically unpopular (and already underfunded) Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway, for a cool $5 million, her attorney announced Wednesday.

Tucker and her attorney have filed a "notice of claim" in court indicating her intention to sue.

Reached for comment, an MTA spokeswoman said: "As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on potential or pending litigation."

Tucker's claim makes the argument that it was "the careless, reckless, negligent acts" of MTA officials that caused the train to "derail from its tracks while in motion, suddenly, abruptly and forcefully, striking a tunnel wall within the subway" — and in turn caused Tucker herself to suffer "serious" injuries to her neck, back and side.

Also factored into the $5 million is the future "pain and suffering, emotional trauma, psychological injuries, medical expenses and loss of earnings" she expects to befall her as a result of the A train derailment, her claim says.

The MTA's annual budget is around $15 billion. (And public transit advocacy groups in NYC estimate the agency needs billions more per year if it really wants to bring the subway system into the 21st Century. )

Tucker and 34 other commuters were injured when their A train derailed at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem on Tuesday morning, according to the MTA. Hordes of shell-shocked commuters had to evacuate through long, dark train tunnels; along the journey, they snapped photos of hazards such as sharp train shrapnel and smoking embers with their phones.

“I thought I was going to die,” Tucker told the New York Daily News. “I thought it was a terrorist attack."

She said she was actually on her way to the hospital that morning — and was in no state to endure the rowdy, violent chaos of the crash and its aftermath.

“I got trampled on, pushed and trampled on some more,” Tucker told the Daily News. “I fell down. Everyone was frantic. People were trying to break the glass to get out." And when she was finally evacuated, she said, "I had to take myself to the hospital. I was in so much pain. No one was there to take me to the hospital. The bus pulled up and dropped me at St. Luke’s Hospital. I have injuries to my spine. I’m in excoriating pain."

MTA officials have blamed the crash on a pair of construction supervisors — now suspended from the job — whose crews allegedly left a piece of replacement rail unsecured on the tracks near the 125th Street station. This stray rail, according to the MTA, is what sent the A train careening off course.

But Tucker's lawsuit will seek to shine some blame back on the agency itself — on alleged longtime negligence at the management level that made this kind of disaster possible in the first place.

“It’s time for the talking to stop and the MTA get the work done to make the trains safe for the people of our city," her attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, said in a statement Wednesday.

"The MTA owes that to all New Yorkers," he said.

Lead photo courtesy of @nrik_nyc/Twitter