Aunt, 74, dead after homeless man pushed her onto BART train in San Francisco: police

A beloved California aunt who helped ensure several of her nieces and nephews could attend college died Monday after a crazed homeless man pushed her onto a moving train, police reports show.

The 74-year-old woman was on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) platform at San Francisco’s Powell Street Station when suspect Trevor Belmont allegedly pushed her into an oncoming train shortly after 11 p.m., BART police said.

The victim, identified by the coroner as Corazon Dandan, hit his head on the train and fell to the platform.

She was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where she later died, traffic police said.

Dandan, of San Mateo County, was on her way home from her job as a telephone operator at the Parc 55 hotel when she was killed, her nephew told the San Francisco Standard.

Alvin Dandan, a St. Louis doctor, said his aunt took the BART to work and back home every day and revealed his cousins ​​recently warned her against using the BART late at night.

Corazon, who was divorced and never had children, continued working well past the usual retirement age even though she did not need 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 finance his medical studies and the education of several of his cousins.

“Great doesn’t even describe how I feel about this woman,” Alvin DanDan told The Standard on 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 from the Philippines in the 1980s “as a single, independent woman,” he added.

Alvin said he spoke to his aunt via text message the day she was murdered.

“She sounded cheerful,” he said.

BART officers arrested the 49-year-old Belmont man shortly after the fatal shoving at the station. Police said the suspect, also known as Hoak Taing, was a “transient.”

Belmont was booked into the San Francisco County Jail on Tuesday morning. He remains behind bars on charges of murder and assault on an elderly person likely to cause serious injury.

Investigators have not yet determined a motive for this shocking crime and are continuing to interview witnesses and review surveillance videos.

The investigation is ongoing.