It was one tight squeeze on the No. 4 train.
A 52-year-old man was centimeters away from being crushed by the uptown express yesterday, because he was so focused on unwrapping his new electronics purchase he didn’t notice where the platform ended, law enforcement sources said.
The stumbling straphanger fell onto the tracks as the train was pulling into the Brooklyn Bridge station, the source said. He was wedged face up between the train’s compressor and the trough between the two rails with barely an inch to wiggle.
Onlookers had to tell police where to find the man, who was pinned under the train’s first car about halfway down the platform.
Rescuers carefully slid a backboard under him and slowly inched him toward the front of the train. He was then lifted onto the platform.
“He could have been electrocuted,” said NYPD Detective Jim Coll, who was part of the six-man Emergency Services Unit team that rescued the man. “He was definitely lucky to come out of there with his life.”
The straphanger was taken to Bellevue Hospital with a minor cut on his head, sources said.
Additional reporting by Tom Namako