It's a sad story, and as a regular NYC subway rider, I wonder at time just how close I come to those sort of stories. I don't have a fear of closed spaces (claustrophobia) or heights (acrophobia), but if there's a word that describes a paranoia related to blacking out, tripping or slipping and falling into a subway trench just a train speeds into the station, maybe I have that. Let's just say that I don't feel particularly comfortable walking on the "stay behind this line" zone at the ledge of the platform - though maybe most people aren't.
Details were still sketchy in terms of what exactly happened, and it's likely that we'll never know why Ms. Mankos made the decision that she did. News reports disclosed that she was going through some personal problems and that she had a mother in a nursing home suffering from a serious chronic illness. Whether it was a case of horrible judgment - officials used the tragedy as an opportunity to remind riders to never retrieve personal items dropped on tracks, but to instead alert a police officer or MTA employee - or a case where a despondent woman lost the will to live or a emotionally and physically exhausted woman lacked the mental facilities to make the right decision, the loss of life is tragic.
The same article asserts that there might have been an opportunity for a bystander to save her by pulling her up, but most froze in the frenzy of the moment, opting instead to scream warnings and instructions to her. As mentioned in an earlier post, the instinct to risk one's life to save another isn't as natural as we would all hope.
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