74-year-old San Francisco woman killed after homeless man pushes her in front of BART train

The victim identified as Corazon Dandan, of San Mateo County, was getting ready to board a Millbrae-bound train when she was pushed. She struck her head on the train and fell onto the platform. The incident occurred around 11:05 pm, police said. Dandan was transported to San Francisco General Hospital by the fire department and was later pronounced dead.

Belmont was arrested on the platform of Powell Street Station shortly after the incident and was booked into jail around 8 am Tuesday. He has been charged with suspicion of murder and inflicting injury on an elder, likely to cause great bodily injury. Belmont did not have a ticket to ride the train, police said. BART police said they are working to determine a motive for the incident and investigators are actively reviewing surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses.

Dandan was an immigrant from the Philippines who came to San Francisco in the 1980s. She worked at the Parc 55 hotel and rode the BART every day to work. She was returning from work when she was attacked and killed. Her nephew, Alvin Dandan, a doctor in St. Louis, told the SF Standard, "Great does not even define what I think this woman is."

"I wouldn't be here and a lot of my cousins wouldn't be here... She put a lot of people through school," he said, explaining that Dandan was divorced and had no kids but treated her nieces and nephews as if they were her own. He added that Dandan worked well past retirement age even though she did not need the income, and his cousins recently warned her about riding BART late at night, expressing concerns about her safety.