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Videos: Man Who Survived Subway Brush With Death "Jumped" Onto Tracks
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 17, 2014
Modified Apr 17, 2014
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 17, 2014
Modified Apr 17, 2014
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Yesterday, we reported about a disturbing video in which shows a man surviving a very scary close encounter with the A train in Manhattan. The person who took that video has now given us some more details about what happened that night the man fell onto the subway tracks—and provided additional video of the scene immediately after the train stopped. "Yes he was screaming," Omar Diaz told us. "And I told him, 'don't move!' And then two minutes later he just gets back up like nothing! I was freaked out!"
Here's Diaz's disturbing first video of the incident (including the screaming), which occurred on December 28th, 2013, around 3:15 a.m.
Diaz told us that he had just left a friend's house when he came upon the scene above. "[I] started to approach them slowly while recording...and then that happened," he said. He explained why he declined to jump onto the tracks to pull the man out:
I did not wanna help because the guy looked like he was on something and he jumped down there on his own...not like he tripped or got pushed. So they asked for my help and I refused because I didn't know what they were capable of. And I'm a big dude so it would've been hard for me to get back up. And I also just had a baby girl so I was definitely not going to risk my life over anybody that I didn't know.
As you can see in the videos below, the man escaped uninjured despite the train rolling over him. "The male originally refused medical aid but was forced to go to Columbia Presbyterian hospital as an emotionally disturbed person with EMS," MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told us.
Subway Part 2 from Gothamist on Vimeo.
The man's friend, the one who yelled at the conductor to stop the train in the first video, seems particularly angry with his pal, thanking everyone else there and then yelling at him: "We all tried to fucking help you. All of us."
Subway Part 3 from Gothamist on Vimeo.
Diaz added that the person who seemed most freaked out at the time was the train conductor: "The train conductor didn't know what was going on until he saw the guy's friend waving his hand. So he stopped the train almost half way...then came out the train and was very nervous—he was shaking. He thought he killed somebody."
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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