NEW YORK — With seconds to spare, NYPD Officer Ludin Lopez and a good Samaritan lifted a man back onto the platform at the 3rd Avenue-149th Street subway station in the Bronx after he fell onto the tracks.
 


"He was just so out of it, by the time we got him on the platform, he was starting to become more coherent, but basically he explained that he had fainted,” Lopez said at a news conference Thursday.

Police said it happened just after 11 a.m. Wednesday. The rescue, caught entirely on camera, shows an unidentified man, with no regard for his own safety, jump down to join Lopez and help the unconscious man.

"Thankfully, this gentlemen — I don’t know who he is — but if he were here I would shake his hand,” Lopez said. “He helped me get the gentlemen back onto the platform.”

What You Need To Know

  • Just after 11 a.m. Wednesday, a man fell onto the tracks at the 3rd Avenue-149th Street subway station in the Bronx

  • Police Officer Ludin Lopez jumped down to help the man as a train approached the station

  • A good Samaritan also jumped down to help lift the man to safety

Lopez and three other officers from Transit District 12 were conducting a station inspection at the time. Officer Ricardo Peguero ran to the front end of the platform to slow down the train and buy his partner some time.

In the video, you can see the light of the approaching train getting closer, just a few dozen yards away.

"Anytime you want to get an attention of a conductor, you wave your flash light from left to right and they know that means to slow down,” Peguero said. “That’s exactly what I did.”

The other officers, as well as commuters waiting for the train, helped pull all three men to safety. Straphangers can be heard cheering in the video.

"When the community works with us, and we have their support, and they see we are there to help them, great things can happen,” said Lopez, who was grateful for those cheers.

In a statement, interim NYC Transit President Craig Cipriano praised the rescue. “The selfless and heroic acts by an NYPD officer and New Yorkers who jumped into action displayed an extraordinary coming together of police and community to avert a tragic ending."

The unconscious man was taken to a local hospital and was expected to be okay.

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