Ns News Online Desk: A Bronx man who was saved by a good Samaritan during an alleged gang assault plans to sue the city transit authority over the harrowing ordeal — which left his “angel” fatally struck by a train.
Roland Hueston, 36, was killed by an oncoming D train after saving Noel Soto, who was knocked unconscious when he was allegedly thrown onto the tracks by a group of gang members early on New Year’s Day in the Bronx. Noel Soto had been on the platform inside the station blowing a horn to celebrate the new year when he claims he was attacked by a group of men who asked him to stop making noise.
“He didn’t even know me,” Soto told The Post through tears, in an exclusive interview last week. “He gave his life to save mine.”
“He didn’t have anything to do with what was happening to me. He’s an angel. I still don’t believe that I’m here.”
Soto had been on the platform in the Fordham Road station blowing a horn to celebrate the new year when he claims he was attacked by the group of men who had asked him to stop making noise.
They “started choking me, they threw me on the floor, they started kicking me,” Soto recalled. “Then they threw me on the track.”
The 39-year-old Bronx man said he doesn’t have any memory of what happened afterward because the fall knocked him out. He awoke in the hospital hours later.
The incident left Soto with a “fracture and dislocation of the right elbow,” according to a notice of claim that Soto filed against the New York City Transit Authority on Tuesday.
Notices of claim are legal precursors required before filing a lawsuit against a government agency. The group of suspected gang members allegedly started choking and kicking Noel Soto before throwing him on the train tracks.
Soto’s legal notice alleges that the transit authority “failed to summon emergency assistance” and that changes to the station made it less safe, including installing less restrictive turnstiles that made it easy for the assailants to jump them.The transit authority modified the station including “removal of existing turnstiles and replacing them with turnstiles that facilitate fare evasion, removal of personnel booths, removal of personnel, and removal of cameras, alarms, and other security measures,” the notice alleges.
