ELDERLY FIL-AM DIES AFTER HOMELESS MAN PUSHES HER INTO COMMUTER TRAIN IN SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO — A homeless man allegedly pushed a 74-year-old woman into an arriving San Francisco Bay Area commuter train, killing her, police said Tuesday (local time)

Authorities with Bay Area Rapid Transit, better known as BART, said in a statement that the woman hit her head on the train and fell onto the platform in downtown San Francisco. She died at a local hospital.

The woman was pushed shortly after 11 p.m. Monday at the Powell Street station, authorities said. A 49-year-old man described by police as transient was booked into jail early Tuesday.

The medical examiner's office identified the woman as Corazon Dandan. Her nephew, Alvin Dandan, said she was going home after finishing her shift as a telephone operator at a downtown hotel, both the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Standard reported Tuesday.

BART police did not provide a motive, and the investigation is ongoing.

The San Francisco Chronicler reported that the alleged assailant, Trevor Belmont, is facing charges of murder and elder abuse.

It quoted Dandan's nephew as saying that his aunt was a "brave, independent woman" who grew up in the Philippines and moved to the US alone in the 1980s. After a brief marriage, she remained single and showered kindness and generosity on her nieces and nephews, who affectionately referred to her as "Tita Cora," he said.

Dandan said that it was his aunt who put him through medical school after which he became an intensive care physician in Illinois.

The report also quoted Clif Clark, the hotel's general manager and an area general manager at Marriott International as saying that Dandan was a "cherished employee" of the Westin St. Francis in Union Square for more than 40 years and "will always be remembered fondly by her St. Francis' family."

Dandan's nephew was also quoted as saying in the San Francisco Chronicle that Dandan's family often encouraged her to retire but that she told them that she wanted to keep working.

She had held the same job for four decades, preferring night shifts that ended as late as 11 p.m. or 1 a.m., to which she "took the same route every day" to and from work, he said. "She was very energetic, she liked her co-workers and she liked having something to do," he said.

In addition to work, Dandan frequently traveled internationally with family and co-workers, her nephew said. She was constructing a vacation home on a lake in the Philippines at the time of her death, he said.. "We were in the process of building it and now she's gone," he said.

Homicides are rare on BART, which travels throughout much of the Bay Area. This is the first homicide of the year.

In New York City, a passenger died in March after being pushed into an oncoming subway train in an unprovoked attack by a person experiencing mental health issues. Two years ago, a homeless man pushed an Asian American woman into the NYC subway at the Times Square station, killing her.

Such seemingly random crimes attract widespread attention, but advocates for people who are homeless say they are more likely to be victims and not perpetrators of crime.

2024-07-03T05:29:03Z dg43tfdfdgfd