John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Larry Hollopeter, left, with Wesley Autrey, who saved his son from a train on Tuesday.
Posted on 01/03/2007 10:47:29 PM PST by neverdem
Wesley Autrey teetered back and forth on the edge of a subway platform yesterday, re-enacting how he dived onto the tracks of a southbound No. 1 train in Manhattan on Tuesday to save another man’s life.
A little boy with black hair and a bowl cut followed each of his moves. Other passers-by at the 137th Street station let loose the occasional hurrah or hand clap. Still others riffled through newspapers, which featured Mr. Autrey’s picture and headlines like “Subway Superman.”
A few subway stops away, at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center on 114th street near Amsterdam Avenue, Cameron Hollopeter underwent a second day of medical evaluation. Police said Mr. Hollopeter, a first-year film student at the New York Film Academy, had suffered a seizure, which sent him convulsing off the platform and onto the tracks, where Mr. Autrey held him down as the train rumbled just inches above them.
Moments after the train came to a halt, Mr. Autrey recounted yesterday, Mr. Hollopeter asked if he was dead. “I said, ‘You are very much alive, but if you move you’ll kill the both of us.’ ” Both men emerged from the episode with little more than bruises, but Mr. Autrey also emerged a star.
Mr. Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker, said he knew something was different when he showed up for work later on Tuesday. His boss, he said, bought him lunch — a ham-and-cheese hero — and later told him to take yesterday off.
Then yesterday morning, as he walked to his mother’s apartment in Harlem, “a stranger came up and put $10 in my...”
--snip--
“Donald Trump’s got a check waiting on me,” he said. “They offered to mail it; I said, ‘No, I’d like to meet the Donald, so I can say, Yo, you’re fired.’ ”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Great story.
He is a US Navy veteran, a point that was missed on this evening's CNN broadcast....
Once a hero always a hero.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
this may be his best move yet
Doogle
God Bless Mr. Autrey!
Give him his due.....how many other folks do you think would have done this?
bttt
bttt
Thanks for posting this wonderful story!
I first heard about this story on the CBS morning show this morning. Hannah Storm interviewed Autry and he said basically what you are saying. He did not consider himself a "hero", and said he wished more New Yorkers would louk out for each other.
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