A POSTAL worker rode in a subway train around New York for six hours before a commuter noticed he was dead.

Eugene Reilly, 64, suffered a heart attack soon after boarding the last carriage of a Q train bound for Brooklyn at West 34th Street, Manhattan, at about 1am.

The Vietnam veteran, who had worked as a mail handler for 35 years, had just finished his shift at a sorting office on nearby Ninth Avenue and was on his way home to the Kings Highway stop in Brooklyn.

The father of three, who was 6ft 2in (2m) and weighed 17st 12lb (113kg), had long suffered from heart problems and had undergone heart bypass surgery several years ago.

But no one noticed when he collapsed on his seat.

New Yorkers are trained not to make eye contact on the subway to avoid provoking confrontations. They are also inured to homeless people sleeping on the trains. But even in this often-harsh city, Mr Reilly’s case is rare.

When he did not return home his wife, Patricia, realised something was wrong and began calling hospitals.

The Q train completed its 56-minute, 15-mile route from 57th Street in Manhattan to Brooklyn’s Coney Island six times — each passing just behind Mr Reilly’s house where his wife was desperately trying to locate him. It was not until 7.11am on Thursday that Mr Reilly was discovered when a curious passenger tapped him on the arm just outside the 14th Street-Union Square stop.

“He was a hard-working man, a good father, a good husband,” Mrs Reilly told the New York Post. “He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

New York has the world’s only 24-hour underground system and trains are often empty at night, particularly the last carriage, which is considered dangerous. Mr Reilly was noticed when the train filled up in the rush hour.

A subway spokesman said that conductors were told not to intervene if a passenger was sitting up and not causing trouble. “If they are not sitting up, the conductor can tell a police officer to nudge that person because they are not allowed to take up more than one seat,” he said.

Mr Reilly was not the first dead commuter to pass unnoticed in New York. In 1999 an Ecuadorian immigrant, Ignacio Mendez, 36, sat on the subway for several hours before passengers realised he was dead. The next year, Alexsander Davidovich, 61, died on a bus in Brooklyn. It was about 45 minutes before the driver nudged him.

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