A journey comes to tragic end

Matthew R. Gallagher, a 22-year-old from New Zealand, and his friend had just left a bar and were waiting at Haymarket Station for an Orange Line train to take them back to their hostel early yesterday when some coins next to the tracks caught their eye.

The friend, Craig Jonas, jumped into the track pit on the northbound side and emerged with 11 cents, according to accounts he gave authorities and a friend. But as he was climbing out, he heard Gallagher shout and realized his friend had gone in and been electrocuted when he brushed against the third rail.

Jonas and a bystander pulled Gallagher up onto the platform, where Jonas said he administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation for several minutes until emergency personnel arrived. Authorities said Gallagher was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General Hospital.

''This is an unimaginable tragedy that will stay with subway and police personnel for a very long time," said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the MBTA. ''It's our sincere wish that a senseless incident like this is never repeated."

Gallagher's mother, Gay, said by telephone yesterday from her home in Howick, New Zealand, that her son had not previously been in a subway system like Boston's and would not have been familiar with the idea of an electrified third rail.

Officials said there are signs in all Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority track pits with electrified rails that say in red capital letters: no trespassing, danger third rail. The rail carries 600 volts of electricity, which powers the trains and their electrical systems.

Pesaturo said Gallagher and Jonas, also from New Zealand, had just finished spending the summer at Camp Modin in Belgrade, Maine.

Howard Salzman, director and owner of the camp, said that Gallagher taught water skiing and that Jonas was a swimming instructor. Salzman said in a telephone interview that Jonas was too traumatized to speak with a reporter yesterday.

''It does not appear that they were seeking a thrill, but merely killing time and did not realize the danger," Salzman said later in an e-mail to the Globe. ''Craig told me that he never saw a sign warning of the electrified rail."

Gay Gallagher said an attending doctor at MGH contacted the family in Howick, a suburb of Auckland. Along with his mother, Matthew Gallagher leaves his father, Les, and a 20-year-old sister, Amy.

''It was just a dopey thing to do, wasn't it?" Gay Gallagher said. ''He didn't think about the dangers, did he? If he had known of the danger, I'm sure he wouldn't have done that. We don't have anything equivalent [to a third rail] in New Zealand, so I don't know if it would have passed his mind.

''He was certainly a fine son," she added. ''We were very proud of him."

Jonas called the family to talk about what happened.

''He was rather numb," Gallagher said.

Matthew Gallagher, who loved sports, had left the Maine camp with Jonas last week, and the two toured the East Coast for several days. They were to split up yesterday, with Jonas going to New York and Gallagher preparing to go to London, where he had a two-year work permit and planned to find a job in marketing.

The whole journey, the time in Maine and the work in England, was part of what Gallagher's mother said was a New Zealand tradition called OE, or overseas experience, during which young men and women leave the Pacific islands to tour the world, usually before coming home and settling down.

Gallagher's girlfriend of three years planned to join him in London in October, Gay Gallagher said.

''We're very saddened; we couldn't have asked for better people to work with the kids," Salzman said of Gallagher and Jonas.

Gallagher had a bachelor's degree in marketing management from a university near his home in Howick, New Zealand, and was extremely athletic, competing in hockey, Rugby, volleyball, and sailing in the nearby Hauraki Gulf. He was an avid water skier, wakeboarder, and snowboarder, according to Salzman, who remembered him yesterday as ''an incredibly solid kid."

Gallagher had come to the United States and Camp Modin in June with help from Camp Counselors USA, a California-based agency that hires foreign students to serve as counselors in camps in the United States.

The organization recruits foreign students with promises of free or discounted air fares and opportunities to travel.

According to the agency's director, Ruth Develle, Gallagher's US visa would have expired Sept. 24. Develle said she had commented to staff that the summer had been extremely safe after bringing about 7,500 foreign students to the United States this year.

Gay Gallagher said her son had recently visited Washington, D.C., and wrote home about being awed.

The day before he died, Gallagher wrote an e-mail to his mother about strolling around the Harvard campus, a walk that had ''given him such a new perspective on studying that he was contemplating doing his master's on his return to New Zealand."

''His experience there had really inspired him," she said.