A 74-year-old Filipina returning home from work was pushed into a moving BART train at Powell Street station and killed on Monday night.
A report by San Francisco Chronicle stated that Corazon Dandan, a Daly City in San Mateo County resident was struck in the head on the train and fell onto the platform She later died at the San Francisco General Hospital where she was transported by the fire department.
Police later arrested transient (homeless) Trevor Belmont, 49, also known as Hoak Taing, on the platform of Powell Street Station shortly after the first homicide incident on the BART this year.
Belmont was booked in county jail at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, where he remains after being arrested on suspicion of murder and inflicting injury on an elder, likely to cause great bodily injury.
In an interview with Corazon’s nephew Alvin Dandan, a doctor in St. Louis, it was learned that Corazon was on the way home after her shift as telephone operator at the PARC 55 hotel when the incident happened.
Alvin hailed his Tita Cora, who immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines in the 1980s, with helping pay for his medical school as well as the education of several relatives, very unselfish and “someone who just loved working and being around younger people.”
“Great does not even define what I think this woman is I wouldn’t be here and a lot of my cousins wouldn’t be here…She put a lot of people through school,” Alvin shared on Tita Cora, a single, independent woman who rode BART every day to her job at the hotel
His cousins recently warned her about riding BART late at night, fearing that the transit system was unsafe.
BART police are actively investigating, interviewing witnesses, and reviewing surveillance footage. Investigators are still working to determine a motive for the incident.
