Debris from elevated subway line crashes into SUV in Queens

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A piece of wood fell from an elevated subway trestle on the No. 7 line in Woodside, Queens, and crashed into a vehicle, narrowly missing the driver, on Thursday.

Images from the incident, posted to social media, show a beam with some green paint impaled through the windshield of an SUV. The driver, Mahboob Lodhi, was unharmed. He told Fox 5 that he is shocked by the close call. 

New York City Transit crews cordoned off the area beneath the tracks and then tore apart a rotting wooden platform from the underside of the trestle. The workers said the platform was probably installed for construction work months or perhaps years ago.

A day later, New York City Transit President Andy Byford told reporters that this should never have happened.

"That piece of wood had nothing to do with the structure of the actual elevated section itself—it wasn't track, it wasn't a railroad tie," Byford said. "It was a piece of wood that we think had been there for some time—possibly for tens of years."

The MTA said it will conduct a full investigation to figure out exactly what went wrong. In the meantime, crews are checking the rest of the No. 7 line to see if there any other structural issues.