SUBWAY ACCIDENT VICTIMS ON FIRST DATE
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Injury Attorney)
Readers may recall this subway accident news piece from the papers and my recent blog.
Juliet, or 19 year-old Beatriz Briceno, was on a first date with 29 year-old Jose Gomez, our Romeo.
In a subway station in Astoria, Queens, New York City, she accidentally dropped her coat onto the subway tracks. Her pockets full of her "stuff," she jumped down onto the tracks to retrieve her coat, and he jumped too. Then the train struck them. Beatriz Briceno had texted excitedly to friends during her first date with fellow Venezuelan immigrant Jose Gomez; before they were hit by the subway train in a tragic accident, killing him and seriously injuring her, as previously reported.
The couple's date came a week after their first meeting, when the pretty Briceno waited on Gomez at a restaurant.
Gomez, the assistant manager at another Manhattan eatery, wrote to her on Facebook that night and texted her, saying, "It was great meeting you. You seem like a great girl. Why don't we meet up this weekend?" Briceno particularly liked that Gomez posted photos of himself with his dog and family -- rather than pictures of him partying at a club.
Briceno and Gomez started their date after she got off work at 6 p.m. Then they were to meet up with Gomez's friends.
Briceno dressed for the occasion in a sparkly gray shirt that matched her gray jeans.
She wore sexy, strappy sandals and brought along her black leather jacket, which held her keys, wallet and phone.
Still, the teen was nervous, not knowing anything about Gomez beyond e-mails..
But that all appeared to slip away when the handsome, chatty Gomez came to whisk her off.
That all changed a short time later, when Briceno's jacket, with all the belongings in the pocket, fell to the tracks at the 36th Avenue station.
In the accident, Gomez was killed alongside his critically injured gal pal. Briceno remains hospitalized for her injuries - bleeding on the brain and a lacerated kidney and liver.
