Stephanie Marrow was on her way to school when she witnessed the aftermath of the subway attack that took place in Brooklyn Tuesday morning.
The Massachusetts native, who was born and raised in Stoughton and moved to New York about 10 years ago, was riding on the D train heading to Borough of Manhattan Community College in Tribeca, where she studies music performance, when the shooting occurred.
As she rode the train, Marrow had no idea that a gunman had set off smoke grenades and opened fire at the train station at 36th street. (The suspected shooter, 62-year-old Frank R. James, has since been taken into custody, and the 10 people who were shot are expected to survive, according to The Associated Press. )
Advertisement
“Between 9th and 36th street is where we started slowing down,” said Marrow, 33.
Marrow said her train stopped and she heard the intercom turn on, as if the train operator was going to make an announcement. But all they could hear was background noise from the operator’s radio. It sounded like people yelling and screaming.
“The train conductor, we couldn’t hear him, but we could hear his radio,” she said. “There was yelling and screaming. We could hear that over the intercom.”
The train started moving but ended up stopping a second time. The intercom turned on, and once again Marrow and the other passengers could hear screaming over the radio in the background, along with the train operator announcing there was some kind of delay.
“We’re all kind of looking at each other, like what’s going on,” she said. “And we’re not sure.”
Eventually, the train started moving again and they pulled into the station at 36th Street.
“We pull in,” she said. “We can tell something’s wrong.”
Marrow said she saw a couple people on the platform who looked confused. The train on the other side of the platform appeared to be empty, and someone was yelling at people not to get on board that train.
Advertisement
Marrow said she heard an announcement over the train station’s intercom that there had been some kind of “smoke incident, or something like that.” But she didn’t see any smoke.
What she did encounter was a scene that was both “weird, surreal” and “really disturbing.” And there was a lot of confusion. She and the other passengers didn’t know what had happened.
She saw a person with professional-looking camera taking pictures at the end of the platform, and two people on the ground, with three or four people — who appeared to be passengers, because they were wearing civilian clothes — tending to them.
As she walked and got closer to the people on the ground, she could see their heads were resting on backpacks.
She then got back to her train, because it was about to leave the station, and the doors closed.
As the train left the station she got an even closer view of the scene. There was blood trailing from the empty train to the platform, where the two wounded people were on the ground.
It wasn’t until she arrived at school that she learned what had happened.
“I couldn’t believe how many people had been shot,” she said. “We had basically pulled up after the real craziness happened.”
She happened to be running a little late that morning, and had been minutes away from getting on the train where the shooting occurred.
Advertisement
Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.