The grieving father of a 16-year-old girl fatally struck on Brooklyn subway tunnel catwalk is fighting through his grief to learn more about what happened to his daughter.
In an exclusive interview, Nelson Cross Sr. remembered daughter Ne’isa Herod Cross as a precocious learner with a love for music.
“She enjoyed reading and understanding the bible,” Cross, 46, said. “She would have a question that would make me study and get closer to God.”
The teen was hit and killed by a train as she walked on a tunnel catwalk near the 4th Ave.-9th St. station in Park Slope on March 26, police said. Investigators believe she and a group of kids she was with were attempting to navigate the tunnel on foot to the next station, police sources said.
“I know for a fact my daughter would not be walking through the tunnel,” the heartbroken and confused dad said.
Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News
Police respond to the 4th Avenue – 9th Street subway station in Brooklyn, New York City after the girl was fatally struck by a train on Tuesday. (Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News)
Cross said he spoke with an investigator who said Ne’isa had been with four friends who ran away after the train hit her — but that two of the pals later returned to the station with their parents. Cross said he is thankful for the friends who came back as he tries to understand what happened.
Cross went to the station to try to get answers and to leave a memorial of balloons and roses for Ne’isa.
“She was 16 years old so I brought 16 balloons and one that said ‘Baby Girl’,” Cross said.
“The supervisor of the station was very helpful. He was able to take me to the area and I was kind of able to look but at that time I wasn’t all the way together,” Cross said.
“I learned that New Yorkers have some of the biggest hearts,” he said of strangers who comforted him in the station as he set up the memorial to his daughter. “I kind of broke down a little bit. I had some New Yorkers helping me out and I really appreciate it.”
Courtesy of the victim’s family
Ne’isa’s father place balloons and flowers at the station in her memory. (Courtesy of the victim’s family)
Ne’isa wrote poetry and was someone friends could rely on when struggling in the face of obstacles.
“They called her and she was able to talk to them and help them out,” Cross said.
“She was brought up in the church and she had a relationship with God and no matter who you were, no matter what you was going through, she was able to touch your hand and you would feel okay. She was very inspirational for her friends in her school.”
Ne’isa had a younger sister born two years after her, Cross said, and lived with the sister and their mother in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Before his divorce from Ne’isa’s mother, he and his two daughters were inseparable.
“All three of us, all of us was always together,” he said of his daughters.
Cross, who suffers from epilepsy and now lives in New Jersey, learned of his daughter’s death through family members.
“My daughters was the only thing that was important to me,” Cross said.
Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News
Police respond to the 4th Avenue – 9th Street subway station in Brooklyn after the girl was fatally struck by a train on Tuesday. (Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News)
The MTA has recently installed barriers at some stations to prevent people from falling to the tracks or being hit by passing trains. Agency officials have also sought to more strongly discourage subway surfing, which has grown in popularity among teens who climb atop moving subway cars seeking thrills and attention on social media.
Cross has heard speculation from investigators and station workers about what may have happened in the moments before Ne’isa died, including speculation the teen’s backpack was possibly caught by the passing train.
“All of them sound strange,” he said of the theories.
