NYC Subway Death: How Did Emily Singleton, 22, Die?

A woman found dead on the subway tracks in New York over the weekend has been identified as Emily Singleton, 22, of Park Slope, Brooklyn. According to the Daily Mail, Singleton was a theatre student and aspiring actress originally from Downington, Pa., who had moved to New York to pursue a career on stage. Her grandmother told the Mail that she was "doing what she really wanted to live in life" and that living in New York had been a "dream" for her.

The New York Times reported that the police did not classify the death as a homicide but rather that of someone "dead on arrival," and quoted a spokeswoman from the medical examiner's office as saying the cause of death had not yet been determined, as the police investigation was ongoing. Singleton had been last seen leaving a bar in Greenwich Village at around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday night and boarding a train at the West 14th Street station. At around 1:30 p.m. the next day, someone called police after spotting a limp body on the tracks.

A Metropolitan Transit Authority station manager explained the apparently long delay between her fall and the discovery of her body by pointing to the emptiness of the downtown platform at the northern end, the deepness of the space between rails and the potentially obscuring ties which cross them, and the straightness of the approach to the station. Her body was found in a deep trough on Sunday.

CBS News reported that police said she was intoxicated when she entered the subway station, though toxicology reports are pending. There appears to have been a confusion when a stranger who was trying to help her escorted Singleton off the train and ended up outside the train, holding Singleton's purse. Singleton got back on and the doors closed behind her. The stranger returned the purse to a friend who had called Singleton's phone.

The incident comes only a day after a man was killed by a subway train after climbing onto the tracks at 72th Street to retrieve something and less than a week after someone else was struck and survived. And less than two weeks ago, a young man was killed on his 18th birthday after he and his friends entered the wrong side of the station and tried to cross the tracks to reach the other side.

Singleton had been working at a clothes shop in the city to pay for acting classes at New York University. She was a graduate of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Her grandmother said she had been going to plays and different activities in the city.