Posted on 05/26/2010 3:37:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Editor's Note: Are you the hero? We want to hear your story. Contact the Daily News at 212-210-1585.
He's the city's newest subway hero - but who is he?
A mysterious good Samaritan saved a young woman from being crushed by an L train in Union Square after she fainted and tumbled onto the tracks Monday, police said Tuesday.
The hero courageously jumped onto the tracks and made a nick-of-time rescue after Brooklyn photographer Jessica Oshita, 26, fell suddenly Monday night.
"I think this whole thing is a miracle," Oshita's mother, Sue Oshita, told the Daily News from her home in Hawaii. "He is a guardian angel."
Oshita's fall left her unconscious and lying face-down on the tracks, blood pouring from her head. The hero had little time to rescue her - perhaps less than a minute, one witness said - but he was cool under pressure.
He first tried to lift Oshita onto the platform, police sources said, citing accounts provided by at least two witnesses.
But before he could pull off the rescue, he heard the rumbling of the oncoming Manhattan-bound train and was forced to make a split-second switch to Plan B.
It proved to be a life-saver.
As the train approached, the hero placed Oshita's body in the well between the rails and then quickly hoisted himself onto the platform, the sources said.
The hero - described by cops only as a black man - then disappeared quietly into the night.
"He has not been identified," a police source said last night.
Ana Mercedes Cardenas, a Manhattan lawyer, was on the opposite platform, waiting for a Brooklyn-bound L train, when Oshita fell.
"I saw the woman face down on the rails," Cardenas said, noting blood was pooling on the tracks. "It was shocking to see."
Cardenas, 26, said she saw someone move like they were going to jump down from the platform, but the person hesitated. She said she did not see anyone go down onto the tracks, but added she had stepped back, frightened by the sight of so much blood.
Many straphangers waiting on the platform apparently didn't see the man's heroics, either. When the sound of the oncoming train was heard, Cardenas said people began "yelling and screaming," believing they were about to witness a tragedy.
"The train started coming, everybody just looked at the track and started waving their hands, screaming: 'Stop! Stop! Stop!'" Cardenas recalled. "But the train didn't stop."
Five subway cars rolled over Oshita, police said. She suffered three facial lacerations requiring stitches, and remained in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital yesterday.
"She's fine," Oshita's mother said, adding that the young shutterbug's father was flying to New York to be with his daughter.
The hero's bravery was reminiscent of the lifesaving actions of Wesley Autrey, the construction worker who saved a man who had a seizure on a subway track in 2007. Autrey threw himself over the man and held him in the well between the rails as the No. 1 train passed by.
Oshita's mother hopes her daughter's savior will not remain anonymous. "I do wish that somebody would find him," she said.
I’ll bet this guy is ex-military.
TYPO CORRECTION : “ Either this was a true to life angel “
I wouldn’t want the media attention.
God knows what you did, Mr. Hero. That’s all you need. If I were you, I would stay anonymous. The mainstream media is vicious and will find some way to tear you down. And much thanks for what you did!
“While You Were Sleeping”
“the hero placed Oshita’s body in the well between the rails “
That was risky.
Everything is risky. Do you have a point?
LOL. Actually, no, I really didn’t have a point.
Glad the well between the rails was deep enough.
One of the strangest deaths I've ever read about occurred in the NYC Subway. A homeless man was urinating on the tracks and somehow the stream of urine came into contact with the third rail electrocuting the poor devil. I read this in a book by a former NYC medical examiner whos name I'm sorry to say I no longer recall.
Would that be the literal definition of “p!ssed off?”
I have no problem whatsoever accepting this to have been a guardian angel! I have had a couple of experiences in my life that could not be explained in any other way, period.
The Bible tells us that children have angels who are in the presence of God daily.
By tomorrow the black man will be Obama and no one in the WH will do anything to deter the story.
I sort of doubt that story because the stream of urine is not a laminar flow and the voltage is not high enough to arc between droplets. More likely he stumbled and fell while he was urinating.
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