A Philadelphia man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after assaulting another person who accidentally slipped onto the tracks at a University City SEPTA station. The individual was fatally struck by an oncoming train, moments later as it pulled into the eastbound platform at 34th Street Station on the Market-Frankford Line.
Chaz Wearing, 40, was taken into custody by law enforcement in the vicinity of 40th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia on Thursday, Jan. 4, according to the city’s district attorney’s office.
The DA’s office says that the fight between Wearing and the victim started around 4:40 p.m. on the platform.
Witnesses provided video evidence that captured the last bit of the two men’s argument. In these final seconds of the footage that has since been widely spread on social media, the victim has Wearing cornered, gripping him by his clothing.
Officers report that the victim, whose identity is currently withheld but is noted to be 38 years old, was observed admonishing Wearing backing him up against a stainless-steel pillar on the platform. Dressed in jeans, a gray winter coat, and a gray knit hat, he is then seen making threatening gestures before the situation escalates into a physical confrontation. During the altercation, as he landed punches on John Doe, the victim stumbled onto the El tracks just as a train was arriving.
The man was pronounced dead an hour after this tragic incident.
As police and emergency workers swarmed the scene, SEPTA officials implemented a service re-routing on the train between 30th and 40th Streets with buses in both directions for nearly 3 hours while police investigated.
Wearing is suspected to be unsheltered, according to authorities and had an outstanding bench warrant related to a strangulation case in Delaware County prior to this recent incident.
Prosecutors further stated that the suspect, who remains in custody, has a criminal record in Pennsylvania, including guilty pleas for criminal trespassing, assault, and various other offenses.
“Appeared to be some type of physical altercation. We don’t know exactly what took place prior to that to initiate this, but it’s being investigated at this point,” Philadelphia Police Inspector Kpana Massaquoi said in an interview NBC10.
Andrew Busch, the transit agency’s spokesperson, says that there is an ongoing investigation to decipher what actually happened to cause this loss of life.
“What our police are looking at is if it started somewhere else,” he said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “As far as we know, it wasn’t a visible fight that was going on for a long period of time.”
