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Petite Woman And Good Samaritans Save Two Men From Oncoming Subway
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 8, 2012
Modified Dec 8, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 8, 2012
Modified Dec 8, 2012
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It was hard not to be horrified after a Queens husband and father was shoved onto the subway tracks in midtown and fatally struck by a train last Monday. The tragic story of Ki-Suck Han has haunted straphangers all week—that certainly was true for 31-year-old Doreen Winkler, who along with some fellow good Samaritans, saved two men from the train tracks this week. “This is not about attention...it’s about what everybody should do,” she told the Daily News about her heroics. “I don’t understand how people can just stand there and watch and not help.”
Winkler, a 5-foot-2 Brooklynite who moved here from Germany four years ago, was waiting for an uptown 5 train at the Bowling Green station in Manhattan around 10:30 p.m. Thursday when she saw a 64-year-old drunk man fall onto the tracks. “I’m like, ‘Get up! get up!’ ” she told the Post. “But he’s not getting up.” She kept thinking about Han: “Not again,” she said. “The whole time in my head, not again. I kept thinking I’m going to watch him die.”
Knowing she wouldn't be able to lift him herself, she enlisted a man on the platform to jump down to try to help. Of course, that's exactly when the train appeared: “I glanced up and see the lights of an approaching train on the uptown side, and glance back and now there are TWO people on the tracks,” said witness Margaret Besheer. Winkler ran over to help them up: “I had one arm each of each man,” she told the News. “I was freaking out that nobody was helping at first.”
But she was then joined in her effort by two other women, and they were able to get both men up: “Thank you, I thought I was going to die,” one of the two told her. The man who had initially jumped down to save the drifter, who was later identified as Jack Simmons, left the station and his identity is unknown.
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bowling green
Doreen Winkler
drunk
manhattan
MTA
petite
subway
subway heroes
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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