Shocking Videos Show Bloody Aftermath Of Dazed Man Falling Onto Subway Tracks
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - A stunning pair of videos shows a nightmare for most commuters in New York City: the bloody aftermath of a man stumbling from the platform onto subway tracks. The good news is an heroic MTA worker eventually saved the man.
Nonetheless, the videos are difficult to watch.
The incident took place at the Dekalb Avenue L train subway stop. It was uploaded to YouTube Monday.
According to a report on Gothamist.com, the person who shot the video said he went into the station when he heard a woman screaming. When the anonymous videographer arrived on the platform, he says he and his friends observed a man rolling around on the tracks. The man was reportedly very intoxicated, and had been urinating on the tracks.
The videographer tells Gothamist he alerted the token booth agent, who instructed him not to jump into the tracks until the electricity to the potentially deadly third rail was cut and the control center notified.
It was then, while they were waiting for Emergency Medical Technicians and MTA workers to arrive, that the videographer pulled out his cell phone and began to record the disturbing scene.
The first video, embedded above, shows the person who fell attempting to scramble his way out of the tracks. His face is a mask of blood, which is streaming from his nose. While within the tracks, he stumbles toward the yellow warning strip at the edge of the platform and plants his hands, as though about to make an effort to climb up. His effort is almost immediately met with failure, and he stumbles backward, apparently tripping over the track nearest to the platform. His head lands square in the ditch between tracks. He clutches his head, rolls to his left, with his hand near the second rail, and pushes himself up on his knees. Then, placing his right hand on the first rail, he attempts to push himself up, but then horribly he slides forward, face-first into the brown muck between the tracks.
On the platform above, an MTA worker and some of the bystanders debate jumping in to help the man.
"Listen, they coming now man," says one.
"Y'all want to try to get him up?" says the MTA worker.
"That's a lot of blood. I'm not trying to touch that blood," is the reply.
"You sure you don't want to try, man? They're going to stop the train," says the worker. The worker then jumps down into the tracks, positions himself behind the stumbling man, and starts giving instructions.
"Just lay right here," says the worker, leaning the man against the platform edge. "Put your body over. Don't worry, I'm going to help you. Come on," he says.
And then, with a shove, the worker pushes the man over the edge and on to the platform. The other bystanders reach down to pull at the bloodied man's clothes.
"Roll over, just roll over," says the worker. The man does, and in doing so moves a few feet from the edge of the platform.
When the man starts to stir, the worker says "Stay right there, don't move... You're going to fall again."
The man, a bloody, dirty mess, sits up anyway.
When a passerby hands him a bottle of water to drink, he can't even grip it. By then, the MTA worker had returned, and gently - but forcefully - urges the man to stay lying down. The worker positions himself between the man and the tracks to keep him from rolling back in.
The other video, available here, shows the aftermath on the platform. A bystander helps to hold the man's head still.
What would you have done? Would you have jumped in to help the man or not? Sound off in our comments section.
