Steven McCluskey, a 40-year-old carpenter and father of two young boys, lost his balance near the bottom of an escalator at Davis Station in Somerville, Massachusetts, just before 5 a.m. on February 27. His coat became caught in the machinery. More than a dozen people walked past him. More than 20 minutes passed before an employee arrived to stop the escalator. McCluskey never regained consciousness and died on March 9 after ten days in a coma.
The MBTA released surveillance video of the incident on a Tuesday, the exact date was not specified, calling McCluskey's death a "terrible accident." The footage and a Somerville police report paint a grim picture: a man struggling alone at the base of a moving escalator in a public transit station, visible to passersby, while no one stopped to help and no transit employee intervened for more than 20 minutes.
This is not a story about mechanical failure in the abstract. It is a story about a man who died in plain sight, in a government-run transit system, while the agency responsible now points riders toward a red emergency button and reminds them to call 911.
The Somerville police report stated that McCluskey was found "pinned at the bottom of the escalator." Officers described him as "unresponsive, bare-chested and his clothing was tightly lodged within the escalator steps." The responding officer wrote:
"I immediately assessed McCluskey for a pulse and detected none."
The surveillance footage reportedly showed McCluskey losing his balance as he neared the bottom of the escalator. He fell just before stepping off, and his coat caught in the machine. He attempted to unzip the coat and free himself. After a few moments, he collapsed, motionless on the stairway.
More than a dozen people passed him during the ordeal. None stopped. After more than 20 minutes, an employee finally arrived and shut down the escalator. Medics arrived moments later. Somerville firefighters administered a dose of Narcan. Medics performed several rounds of CPR before McCluskey began breathing again.
He was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he remained in a coma for ten days. He died on March 9.
The MBTA issued a statement after releasing the surveillance video. The transit authority said:
"It is important that the public knows that anyone can stop an escalator in an emergency by pressing the red button labeled 'STOP' at the top and bottom of each escalator. They should also then immediately call 911. MBTA personnel respond swiftly to all emergencies and do everything they can to assist individuals and secure the situation."
Read that again. A man was trapped in their escalator for more than 20 minutes. No MBTA employee appeared for the duration. And the agency's public statement urged riders, not its own staff, to press the emergency stop button. The statement's claim that "MBTA personnel respond swiftly to all emergencies" sits awkwardly next to a timeline showing a 20-minute gap before anyone from the transit system showed up.
The question of whether surveillance systems and public safety infrastructure actually protect people or merely exist as institutional window dressing is not limited to Boston. But the MBTA's response here is a case study in deflection: acknowledge the tragedy, express sympathy, and redirect responsibility to the general public.
McCluskey's obituary described him as a hard-working carpenter who "loved creating things and took satisfaction in seeing a job through from start to finish." He had six siblings, two of whom predeceased him. He left behind two young sons, Shayne and Steven.
His sister, Shannon Flaherty, told NBC Boston that McCluskey had struggled with drug addiction in recent years. That detail matters, Somerville firefighters administered Narcan at the scene, suggesting responders suspected an overdose may have played a role in his unresponsiveness. But whatever McCluskey's personal struggles, his sister's grief carried a sharper edge directed at the transit authority.
Flaherty said of her brother:
"He did his best every single day to show up for the people that he loved in the ways that he could."
She urged the MBTA to "take accountability" for his death. Her fear was plain:
"And be able to state that they failed him, rather than being able to say the MBTA did nothing wrong. That's the main thing I don't want."
That fear, that a government agency will investigate itself and declare itself blameless, is one that resonates far beyond this family. When public institutions fail and then manage the narrative instead of owning the failure, trust erodes. It is the same pattern Americans see when city leaders dodge direct questions about public safety and send staffers to lecture reporters instead.
The central, unavoidable fact of this case is the timeline. McCluskey fell just before 5 a.m. For more than 20 minutes, he lay trapped at the base of a moving escalator in a public transit station. His clothing tightened around him. His airway was constricted. And no one, not a single bystander, not a single MBTA employee, intervened.
The bystander problem is its own indictment. More than a dozen people walked past a man pinned in an escalator. Whether they assumed he was sleeping, intoxicated, or simply someone else's problem, the result was the same. A man died.
But the institutional failure is worse. The MBTA operates Davis Station. It controls the escalators. It employs staff. It has surveillance cameras, cameras that captured the entire incident. Yet no one monitoring those cameras, if anyone was monitoring them at all, noticed a man trapped in the machinery for more than 20 minutes before 5 a.m.
The Middlesex District Attorney's Office said it will continue to investigate McCluskey's cause and manner of death. That investigation will determine whether the escalator malfunctioned, whether staffing was adequate, and what role, if any, McCluskey's personal health played. Those are important questions. But some things are already clear from the police report and the video.
In an era when Americans are rightly concerned about the normalization of dangerous conditions in public spaces, this incident stands out not for its violence but for its quiet indifference. No one attacked Steven McCluskey. The system simply failed to notice him.
The Daily Mail contacted both the MBTA and the Somerville Fire Department for more information. The MBTA's public statement, focused on emergency stop buttons and 911 calls, reads less like accountability and more like liability management. It is the kind of statement drafted by lawyers, not by leaders who feel the weight of what happened.
Shannon Flaherty's demand is simple: she wants the MBTA to say it failed her brother. That is a low bar. A man was trapped in their equipment, in their station, on their watch, for more than 20 minutes. He died ten days later. If that does not constitute a failure, what does?
The investigation by the Middlesex District Attorney's Office may eventually provide answers about the mechanical and medical specifics. But the broader question, whether the MBTA had adequate staffing, monitoring, and emergency response protocols at Davis Station at 5 a.m., is one the agency should answer now, not after months of quiet review.
When government agencies run essential public infrastructure, they accept a duty of care. That duty does not expire at odd hours. It does not depend on whether the person trapped happens to be struggling with addiction. It exists because taxpayers fund these systems and riders trust them with their safety. When stories surface about public figures who go unaccounted for, the public rightly demands answers. A working-class father trapped in a subway escalator deserves at least the same urgency.
Several questions remain open. What was the exact cause and manner of McCluskey's death? Was anyone monitoring the station's surveillance cameras during the incident? How many MBTA employees were on duty at Davis Station at that hour? Was the escalator functioning properly, or did a mechanical defect contribute to the entrapment? Has the MBTA conducted any internal review of its staffing and monitoring protocols since February 27?
None of these questions have been publicly answered. The MBTA's statement addressed none of them. The Middlesex DA's investigation is ongoing.
Steven McCluskey was a carpenter. He built things. He had two boys who depended on him. He fell at the bottom of a government-run escalator before dawn, and for more than 20 minutes, nobody came.
A transit agency that cannot keep one man alive in its own station has no business lecturing the public about which button to press.
