Louis Moore. (
)
A transit worker was killed yesterday when he accidentally fell in front of a subway in Queens while on the job, authorities said.
Louis Moore, 58, a signal maintainer and a father of three, fell from a ladder he was using to climb off the tracks at the 46th Street station in Astoria at 3:23 a.m., officials said.
Moore’s tool bag either caught on a gate leading from the ladder to a subway platform or was snagged by the Queens-bound E train that was entering the station, said sources.
The mishap put him in the speeding train’s path. Moore, an eight-year veteran of TWU Local 100, was declared dead at the scene.
The Hollis resident is survived by a 17-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old daughter and a 30-year-old son, said members of Transport Workers Union Local 100.
Moore’s boss said he fought for custody of his daughter “and was very interested in her academic affairs.”
“He was a very nice guy … He came to work that day and you never imagined that he wouldn’t be going home,” said fellow signal maintainer Bob Mallon.
Carmen Bianco, the MTA’s acting senior vice president/subways, visited Moore’s family yesterday afternoon.
“The family is having a pretty tough time. They’re trying to work through it as best they can,” Bianco said.
“We’ll continue the investigation and do all the fact finding and put measures in place so it doesn’t happen again.”
“All the rules in the world will not prevent an industrial accident in this envrionment,” said Local 100 president John Samuelsen, who said the union has averaged one workplace death a year for the last 50 years.
The MTA said Moore was the first subway worker to die on the job since maintenance supervisor James Knell fell onto a third rail in April 2010.
TWU worker Marvin Franklin was killed in April 2007 in the last accident involving a subway employee hit by a train.