Straphangers Leap onto Subway Tracks to Save Unconscious Man, Dramatic Video Shows

Passengers on the platform also assisted in the rescue at the City Hall R train station Friday afternoon

Straphangers waiting for the subway at City Hall Friday afternoon sprang into action when they saw a man lose consciousness and fall onto the subway tracks, dramatic witness video shows.

Gothamist, which obtained video of the good Samaritan rescue, reports the passengers were waiting for the R train at City Hall at about 2:30 p.m. when a man in his 50s to early 60s fell onto the tracks. 

"This huge person just fell, and the sound was horrific," Sumeja Tulic, a CUNY student who witnessed the rescue and recorded the video, told NBC 4 New York. 

"At that point I thought, 'This is when I will see for the first time somebody dying in front of my very own eyes,'" said Tulic, who's studying journalism.

But three men suddenly jumped onto the tracks, and Tulic instinctively began recording.

"I sort of saw that they were doing something amazing. I have to say it's a professional sort of thing, like, 'oh, my God, I hope they will succeed and I want people to see this," she said. 

The video shows the men pushing the unconscious man up onto the platform, where several people rushed over to help pull him up. The men on the tracks quickly bound back up onto the platform, again with the help of bystanders on the platform. The good Samaritans then pressed an alarm to warn the conductor. 

The man began regaining consciousness about two minutes later, when the next train pulled into the station. 

Tulic said everyone else was asked to leave the platform, including her, but the rescuers stayed with him.

"It was like a melting pot of goodness," she said.

The FDNY said the man was taken to Bellevue Hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries. It's not clear what caused him to lose consciousness. 

It was the second time in less than a month that bystanders jumped onto the subway tracks in lower Manhattan to rescue a fallen man. Last month, a 19-year-old man jumped onto the subway tracks at Canal Street to move an ill man out of the way of an oncoming train. The teen made it back onto the platform with the help of another bystander seconds before the train pulled in.

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