MTA flagger killed on the D line, a Gowanus school's toxic air. New York Explained for September 6, 2026.

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The death of MTA flagger Moet McCullum

The lights she was setting out were the ones that tell a train she is there.

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Wikimedia Commons / Gowanus Canal

The basement classrooms at PS 372

EducationCitywide1 newsroom

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The Crown Heights buildings City Hall calls a transfer

Housing & Real EstateCitywide1 newsroom

The death of MTA flagger Moet McCullum

The lights she was setting out were the ones that tell a train she is there.

Moet McCullum, 41, a Brooklyn mother of three, was killed just after 11:30 p.m. Thursday by a southbound D train at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station while placing flagging lights on the tracks [17]. Flagging is the subway's warning system: a crew sets yellow lights ahead of a work zone so operators know to slow down, which means the flagger is out on live track before the protection exists [17]. The operator of the D train did not report seeing any lights ahead and was proceeding at normal speed, TWU officials said Friday [17]. Federal regulators counted 38 near-strikes of workers in 2023, up 58% from the year before, when they ordered the MTA to fix track safety (amNY).

“We are heartbroken by the tragic death of our member, a mother of three who was at the start of a new career.”

“This is a difficult day. Last night, we tragically lost a member of our MTA family.”

By the numbers

• 11 monthsMcCullum had been on the job when she was struck [17]
• 2023the last on-the-tracks death of a transit worker: Hilarion Joseph, 57, also a construction flagger, also hit by a D train, at 34th Street-Herald Square [17]
• June 2024another flagger suffered severe head trauma after being hit by an out-of-service F train in Brooklyn [17]

The thread

1. Nov 2023Hilarion Joseph is killed at Herald Square; the Federal Transit Administration orders the MTA to improve track safety, and the MTA appeals that report [17]
2. TodayMcCullum is killed at 161st Street; the NTSB dispatches a go team, and the Track Safety Task Force and TWU Local 100's safety team open their own reviews [17]

WatchWhat the NTSB finds about whether the warning lights were up and visible when the D train came through, and whether the MTA's appeal of the 2023 federal order survives it [17].

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The basement classrooms at PS 372

Two and a half years of filtration, and the fix was moving the five-year-olds upstairs.

District 75 Superintendent Keisha McCoy told families Friday that pre-K and kindergarten students will be moved out of the basement of PS 372's annex at 219 First St. and onto other floors while the state installs more ventilation, the Post reported [27]. The building sits beside the Gowanus Canal Superfund site, and a sub-slab system of pipes and fans has been running under it since 2024; state sampling in July 2025 found indoor air "remained similar to pre-mitigation results" (NYSDEC). School and state officials maintain the levels of benzene and xylene there present no increased health risk to staff and students [27]. Parents found out only this summer that the 2024 mitigation had not worked [27].

“This is an admission that the kids should not have been in the basement the last two and a half years. This just blows up the entire assertion that there's no problem.”

“No level of benzene is safe.”

By the numbers

• 450students, roughly, have classes in the annex, which also holds the art and gym rooms [27]
• 850signatures, more than, on the PTA-backed petition calling on Hochul to resign over the failed cleanup [27]

WatchWhether the added ventilation is in before Thursday's first day, and what the next round of state air sampling shows [27].

FromBreaking NYC News & Local Headlines | New York Post

The Crown Heights buildings City Hall calls a transfer

The city cannot seize a building. It can make the tax bill disappear for a buyer it likes.

Mayor Mamdani celebrated the handover of three long-neglected rent-stabilized buildings at 1018 and 1074 Eastern Parkway and 1392 Sterling Place to Mark Schwartz's Brooklyn Affordable Housing Associates [24]. The Real Deal reports it was a foreclosure sale rather than a seizure: an investor bought the buildings' $2.2 million lead-poisoning judgment, used it as a credit bid, and flipped the portfolio to Schwartz with its liabilities attached [24]. What makes the math work is Article XI, a discretionary city tax break that can cut a stabilized portfolio's property taxes from about 30 percent of rent revenue to single digits, in exchange for a nonprofit-run HDFC and a 40-year regulatory agreement [24].

“Today, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani celebrated the transfer of three long-neglected, rent-stabilized apartment buildings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, putting 88 homes on a path toward greater stability, investment and improved conditions”

“The tenant union has reached an agreement with Schwartz that commits to rehabilitating the three buildings with tenant oversight and moving toward resident ownership.”

By the numbers

• $7.6 millionthe sale price for 88 apartments, about $86,000 per unit [24]
• $88,000 per unitthe Pinnacle portfolio price Mamdani went to court to block months earlier, arguing it would not leave enough money to fix and maintain the buildings; those buildings had far fewer violations per unit [24]

The thread

1. 2019the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act ends the 20 percent vacancy increase and the cost-recovery programs owners used to fund major repairs; the pending sale of this portfolio collapses and the buildings languish for a decade [24]
2. Jun 2026Mamdani's Rent Guidelines Board delivers the first freeze in the board's history covering both one- and two-year leases, after the only previous 0% years, its 2015 and 2016 orders under de Blasio
3. TodayCity Hall celebrates an $86,000-per-unit sale and signals a tax break and a low-interest city loan to make it work [24]

WatchWhether the city actually grants Article XI here, and what "moving toward resident ownership" turns out to mean for the 88 households [24].

FromThe Real Deal

Around the Boroughs

• Brooklyn (East Flatbush): Christopher Davey, 25, was stabbed twice in front of 882 Albany Ave. on his way to the laundromat and died at Kings County Hospital; police are looking for two men who drove off north in a black sedan [8]
• Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay): A 17-year-old set off the metal detector at the Frank J. Macchiarola complex on Avenue X with a handgun in his bag and fled before officers arrived; school safety staff recovered 57 weapons from city schools from January to June [10]
• Manhattan (Upper West Side): Two riders were arrested after a 7:38 a.m. fight at the West 96th Street station involving brass knuckles and a box cutter, as felony assaults in the transit system run 435 this year against 397 at the same point in 2025 [9]
• Manhattan (East Harlem): The corner of East 101st and Madison is now John William Perry Way, for the officer who stopped filing his retirement papers at One Police Plaza and ran to the South Tower [13]
• Citywide: The FDNY's fourth health report counts 608 World Trade Center-related deaths among members who worked the pile, and retired Lt. Jerry Reilly, 75, died Sept. 3 [11]
• Queens (Whitestone): Six people were hurt, two critically, when a car flipped in a multi-vehicle crash on the northbound Cross Island Parkway near Francis Lewis Boulevard [15]
• Queens (Jackson Heights): ESU officers took a man into custody without incident after a barricade at 85-05 35th Ave. following a shots-fired call [14]
• Brooklyn (Windsor Terrace): New developer Goose Property Management is planning a much bigger complex with only standard affordability on the Arrow Linen site, after neighbors spent a rezoning fight winning a low-rise, deeply affordable plan [19]
• Manhattan (Nolita): Kinsmen Property Group filed to rezone 156-166 Bowery for 322 homes in three towers, including 124 affordable senior apartments; the plan is expected to enter ULURP by the end of 2026 [22]
• Manhattan (Midtown): Available office space fell to 27.86 million square feet, within 150,000 feet of its March 2020 level, and 2026 is on pace to be the strongest leasing year since 2000 [25]
• Staten Island: A judge heard two hours of argument over the pied-a-terre tax rollout, with homeowners saying the city wrongly published their names and city lawyers saying no final determinations have been issued [25]
• Brooklyn (Bed-Stuy): Permits were filed for a nine-story, 48-unit building at 862 Kent Ave., a block from the Myrtle-Willoughby Avenues G stop [23]
• Upstate (Kingston): All Points West Distillery is leaving Newark for Kingston, its owners saying New Jersey rules barring food service and direct shipping made the business unworkable [26]
• Long Island (Shelter Island): Spencer Korwin, 38, a Manhattan father of two and a 2012 Team USA triathlete, drowned in Shelter Island Sound; the local police chief said the water near the Pridwin is not usually considered hazardous [5]
• Queens (Flushing Meadows): Coco Gauff beat Cristina Bucsa 6-3, 6-4 to reach the US Open fourth round on a day that knocked out Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova [54]

Worth Doing

• The West Indian American Day Parade and J'ouvert: Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, Monday, free; screening starts at 2 a.m. at 13 controlled entry points, so plan to come in through a checkpoint [34]
• One more beach day at Coney Island: the boardwalk was packed all Saturday with families squeezing in the last weekend before classes, and the sand costs nothing [36]
• Enchanted Pumpkin Trail, Buffalo Zoo: 300 Parkside, opens Thursday, 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. most Thursdays through Sundays until Nov. 1, with more than 500 pumpkins lighting the path; tickets at buffalozoo.org [38]
• Bistro Avera, Lewiston: 32 seats on Center Street, where the chef rolls every cavatelli by hand; the beets run $15 and the cavatelli with chicken sausage $28, open Wednesday to Saturday [39]
• Good to know: New York City schools start Thursday, so this is the last stretch of mornings before the trains and buses fill back up with students [36]

Only in New York

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal has proclaimed Sept. 25, 2026 Dolly Parton Appreciation Day, and the date is the whole joke: written the American way it is 9/25, which is as close as a calendar gets to "9 to 5" [2]. The proclamation credits the song's 1981 Oscar nomination and the Imagination Library, the children's literacy program Parton founded in 1995 that the document says has reached more than 3 million kids worldwide [2]. It also states plainly that the honor covers the borough of Manhattan and does not extend to the rest of New York City, which may be the most New York line in the whole document: even the tribute has jurisdictional limits [2].