Photog: 'If I could have, I would have' saved man from fatal subway crash
Photog: 'If I could have, I would have' saved man from fatal subway crash
A New York Post freelance photographer who has come under fire for taking photos of a man shortly before he was fatally struck by a subway train defended himself Wednesday, saying there was no way he could have saved the man.
Queens man Ki-Suk Han, 58, was fatally struck by a Q train in the 49th Street station in Manhattan on Monday after being pushed on to the tracks following an argument with an assailant. On Tuesday, the New York Post ran a photo by one its freelance photographers depicting Han struggling to pull himself up from the tracks as the train approached, using the headline "Doomed."
The photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, was subjected to a firestorm of criticism across the Web from people who felt he should have helped Han instead of taking the photos. The Post was also attacked for deciding to use the morbid photo on its cover with that headline.
"My condolences to the family, and if I could have, I would have pulled Mr. Han out,'' Abbasi told Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Wednesday. "I didn’t care about the photographs. If you were to see the raw photographs, you would say, I cannot see anything in them.''
Abbasi said the photographs were very dark and were lightened by the New York Post. He was on an assignment for The Post to get photos of the man featured in a recent viral photo of a New York City police officer giving him boots on a cold night because he had no shoes. He also said he was paid for usage of the photographs of Han.
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