e accounts, McCullum froze when she saw the train barreling toward her and couldn't get out of the way in time, but Tyrell said if the train was going at full speed, none of that would have mattered.

 If she froze up like that (it) means she saw it and it was just too late,  he said.  It just scares me to know that the last thing she saw. 

McCullum grew up in Brooklyn and had three children, a pair of twin sons, 19, and a 21-year-old daughter. She also doted on her 2-year-old grandchild, relatives said.

 (She) always kept a smile on her face. She joked a lot. She was just basically fun to be around,  Tyrell said.  She just was a cool person. Everybody loved her. She had a lot of family that love her and she had a lot of friends that love her. 

The news of her death has hit the family like a sledgehammer, he said.

 The people that's taking it the worst is her mom and my wife, her twin sister,  he said.  That was her best friend. They text all day, go out together, they eat together. They did everything together. 

 We're just grieving, devastated,  he said.  As far as her kids, it (hasn't) really hit them yet. They cry, but it's not really hitting. 

Both the MTA and the federal National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the fatal crash.

MTA and union officials said being a flagger is  inherently dangerous work. 

 When you're working under live service, keeping New York moving, you're going to have issues,  John Chiarello, head of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said Friday. Chiarello rose to union leadership after being a signal maintainer for NYC Transit.

 Not only was a life lost, but the train crew that were involved will be traumatized for the rest of their lives,  Chiarello added.

NYC Transit worker Hilarion Joseph was also in his first year on the job when he was struck by a D train and killed while flagging for a track-cleaning crew in November 2023.

Another flagger, not publicly identified, suffered severe head trauma in 2024 after he was hit by an out-of-service F train in Brooklyn.

Both incidents were cited in a scathing Federal Transit Administration assessment in 2024, which demanded that the MTA improve its safety procedures and that the state's Public Transportation Safety Board step up its oversight of New York City Transit.

The MTA appealed that report, saying the findings mischaracterized the agency's safety record.