Saved From The Subway: Good Samaritan Rescues Pregnant Woman Who Fell Onto Penn Station Tracks With Seconds To Spare
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A pregnant woman collapsed face-down onto the subway tracks at New York Penn Station Friday morning and with seconds to spare, she was saved by the kindness of a Good Samaritan.
George Palladino has ridden the subway twice a day, five days a week for the last 25 years -- but he's never had a commute quite like Friday's.
"I just saw the whole body just collapse and it fell straight onto the tracks," he said. "I ran over there and that's when I saw she was bleeding really bad, lying in the middle of the tracks."
It happened around 8 a.m. as the Rockland County real estate developer was chatting with his wife on the phone while waiting on the ACE platform.
"He says 'I have to go, someone just fell,' and I knew he'd never leave someone on the track, I knew," Chesiree Palladino said.
George says he looked down and saw the woman was pregnant.
"She was laying on her back, some people thought it'd be best if she lay there," he said.
Before long, George looked up and saw there was a train one minute away.
"It was a scary decision," he recalled. "I gave someone my phone and I was about to go down there, I just felt there wasn't enough time."
Risking life and limb, he decided to go with his gut.
"I laid on the platform and reached for her," George said. "She rolled over, crawled over the one rail until she was able to grab my hand and that's when I pulled her up as far as I could."
He pulled her up onto the platform just in time with less than a minute to spare. George waited with the woman until medics arrived.
"I say you're a hero," his proud wife told him. "You really are, you got a good heart."
In true George fashion, he proceeded to get on the subway and go to work -- worrying about the expectant mother whose name, he realized, he didn't catch.
Officials say the woman is eight-months pregnant and on her way to a doctors appointment Friday morning when she fell. She was rushed to the hospital with seemingly non-life threatening injuries. CBS2 has tried to reach out to her to see how she and her baby are doing, but so far hasn't been able to track her down.
