A loving California aunt who reportedly sent several nieces and nephews to college died Monday after a crazed homeless man pushed her under a moving train, according to police and reports.
The 74-year-old woman was on the platform at San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Powell Street station just after 11 p.m. when the suspect, Trevor Belmont, pushed her toward an oncoming train, BART police said.
The victim, identified by the coroner’s office as Corazon Dandan, struck his head on the train and fell to the platform.
She was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, where she later died, according to transit police.
Dan Dan, of San Mateo County, was killed on her way home from her job as a telephone operator at the Park 55 Hotel. Her nephew He told the San Francisco Standard.
Alvin Dandan, a St. Louis doctor, said his aunt rode BART to and from work every day, and that a cousin recently warned him about riding BART late at night.
Corazon, who was divorced and had no children, said she continued working past the normal retirement age even though she didn’t need the income.
“She just loved working and being with young people,” Alvin told local news outlets.
She also loved many nieces and nephews and helped pay for his medical school tuition as well as several cousins’ tuition, he added.
“This woman cannot be defined as great in my opinion,” Alvin Dandan told The Standard on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t be here and a lot of my cousins wouldn’t be here. … She put a lot of people through college.”
He added that Dandan landed in San Francisco from the Philippines in the 1980s “as a single, independent woman.”
Alvin said he had spoken to his aunt via text message in the early hours of the morning she was murdered.
“She sounded fine,” he said.
BART officers arrested Belmont, 49, at the station shortly after the fatal shoving. Police said the suspect, also known as Hawk Tyne, is a “vagrant.”
Belmont was booked into the San Francisco County Jail on Tuesday morning and remains in jail on charges of murder, assault on an elderly person and acts likely to cause serious injury.
Investigators are yet to determine a motive for this shocking crime and are continuing to interview witnesses and review surveillance camera footage.
The investigation is ongoing.
