#Parents of boy who lost part of leg to subway train are suing NYC

The parents of a 12-year-old autistic boy who was hit by a subway train last year have sued the city and others for negligence after their son lost part of his leg.

Nathan Stude, now 14, was on the tracks of the Southbound 1 train in the Dyckman Street station July 9, 2019 when he was struck by the train causing him to lose the lower portion of his left leg, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit and his parents.

Stude — referred to in the court papers as N.S. — was “unable to get himself off the track into a position of safety” and then the train came “in contact with the infant plaintiff N.S., who was on the track Roadbed,” the suit filed Tuesday says.

Stude’s parents are suing the city, the MTA, the train conductor, Stude’s aid and the aid’s company for negligence and malpractice.

Aid Brittin Billings failed to control “her charge” Stude so that he ultimately ended up in “the MTA system where he was struck and injured,” the court papers allege.

Billings’ job was to pick Stude up daily after school from his school bus and bring him to his Inwood home to stay with him until his parents arrived, Stude’s parents explained.

Dad Roger Stude, 55, recalled to The Post the fear he had when he heard an announcement of delays due to an accident while riding the train that day.

“The first thing that came through my mind was that it was Nate and it turned out to be the case,” Roger, who works in finance, said.

Roger said he had to wait and worry for about an hour until his worst fears were confirmed.

“I was kind of numb. I spent so much time at that point hoping that it wasn’t the case and then I found out it was the case,” Roger said.  “I wasn’t sure if he was going to survive. It was like I couldn’t function.”

Mom Carrie Edel Isaacman remembered the heartbreaking moment that her partially verbal son began realizing what happened to him.

“Nathan, [who was] thankfully alive, was lying down in the hospital bed and he looked at his physical therapist,” Carrie said noting that her son only speaks one-to-three word sentences. “He said to the PT, ‘Walk?’”

“That really hit me in my gut,” Carrie said. “That’s where he is realizing what he is going to be faced with.”

The parents said that their son was hospitalized in two different facilities for roughly seven months after the accident — only to return home right as the pandemic started to hit in February.

They said Nathan now uses a wheelchair and he is working with a physical therapist to walk again.

“Anytime you take a leg from a child who loved to run around and jump and do all sorts of things like that, you deprive them of a sense of freedom,” Roger said. “That would be for any child.

“This is a child who really is limited in how he can express things already and now you are taking away another avenue of expression and freedom.”

“Autism is challenging enough for a child and our client’s life has been exponentially complicated by this injury,” lawyer Richard Gurfein told The Post. “There were multiple failures on the part of all of the participants that allowed this child to get onto the subway tracks alone and to be struck when he should have been seen.”

They are suing for unspecified damages.

The MTA, the city Law Department, Billings and the company she worked for, A Very Special Place, Inc., all separately did not return requests for comment.

Additional reporting by David Meyer