A beloved California aunt credited with helping send several of her nieces and nephews to college died Monday after a crazed homeless man pushed her into a moving train, according to police and reports.
The 74-year-old woman was on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) platform at the Powell Street Station in San Francisco when the suspect, Trevor Belmont, allegedly shoved her into an oncoming train just after 11 p.m., BART police said.
The victim, identified by the medical examiner’s office as Corazon Dandan, struck her head on the train and fell onto the platform.
She was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, where she later died, transit cops said.
Dandan, of San Mateo County, was on her way home from work as a telephone operator at the Parc 55 hotel when she was killed, her nephew told The San Francisco Standard.
Alvin Dandan, a doctor in St. Louis, said that his aunt rode the BART every day to and from her job and revealed that his cousins had recently warned her about taking it late at night.
Corazon, who was divorced and never had children, kept working well past the typical retirement age despite not needing the income, he said.
“She just loved working and being around younger people,” Alvin told the local news publication.
She also loved her many nieces and nephews, he added, and helped pay for his medical school and several of his cousins’ educations.
“Great does not even define what I think this woman is,” Alvin DanDan told The Standard Tuesday. “I wouldn’t be here and a lot of my cousins wouldn’t be here. … She put a lot of people through school.”
Dandan landed in San Francisco in the 1980s “as a single, independent woman” from the Philippines, he added.
Alvin said he had spoken to his aunt over text messages earlier on the day she was killed.
“She sounded chipper,” he said.
BART officers arrested Belmont, 49, inside the train station shortly after the fatal shove. Police said the suspect, who is also known as Hoak Taing, is “transient.”
Belmont was booked into San Francisco County Jail Tuesday morning. He remains behind bars on suspicion of murder and inflicting injury on an elder, likely to cause great bodily injury.
Investigators have not determined a motive for the shocking crime and are continuing to interview witnesses and review surveillance video.
The investigation is ongoing.
