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“Our biggest fear is that this (victim) lives alone,” Giroux said outside court ahead of the appearance.

Toronto Police were called to Bloor/Yonge Station, at the intersection of the city’s two major subway lines, at 10:15 a.m. on Monday.

Inside the station they found an Asian man, at first described as being in his early 20s but later as being in his 50s or 60s, in severe medical distress.

The man, who had been struck by the eastbound train, was taken alive to a trauma centre where he soon succumbed to his injuries.

Speaking to reporters Monday night, homicide Det. Rob North said surveillance video shows the two men on the platform as an eastbound train is entering the station. They then have an “interaction,” and one of them is pushed and falls under the train.

“The push happened very quickly, and there was none to very limited interaction between our deceased and our accused,” North said, adding that the video is very clear.

Photo by Toronto Police Service

The Yonge subway station, a daily hub for hundreds of thousands of commuters, was closed for most of the day Monday as police investigated. Trains were bypassing the station travelling east and west.

Ross said fatal attacks on the Toronto subway are exceedingly rare. No one has died after being pushed in front of a TTC train since 1997, Ross said.

Suicides on the tracks are far more common. The incident at Yonge Station Monday was one of three train collisions in less than 40 hours on the Toronto system. The other two, one at Pape Station Saturday night, the other at College Station Monday morning, were both deemed intentional, Ross said.

Last year, 19 people died by suicide and another 26 attempted suicide on the TTC.

The narrative of what happened Monday remains fuzzy for now, North said. “What I’ll say is that the victim was at track level,” he explained. “Whether (he was) pushed or (he) stumbled is something we’re looking into.”

North said the video does not appear to show any kind of altercation between the two men before the fatal moment. Whatever it does show, though, was clearly telling. It was the tape, North said, that led the first officers on the scene to call homicide in.

With files from The Canadian Press