Man pushed from subway platform
Fellow straphangers rescue dazed rider
A rider who was pushed to the subway tracks avoided almost certain death Friday when a quick-thinking passenger grabbed him and dragged him back to a Manhattan platform before a rush-hour train barreled into the station.
Edwin Pinez was on his way to his job delivering furniture, and was crossing the platform to catch a No. 6 train at the Brooklyn Bridge station when someone shoved him shortly before 8 a.m., authorities said.
“Somebody grabbed me,” Pinez, 55, told the Daily News, as he recalled the terrifying incident. “I thought it was a joke, one of my friends being a little rough.”
But Pinez quickly realized the drama was all too real as he plummeted to the track bed and bashed his mouth on the concrete. Pinez said he tried to get up, but was disoriented, not immediately aware of the pending danger.
Luckily, a horrified commuter witnessed what is every rider’s worst nightmare, and sprang into action.
“I was trying to get up. I believe one or two guys helped pull me up,” Pinez recalled. “I’m grateful for that. I wish I could thank them. I think they were gone by the time I was out.”
Pinez, of Staten Island, said he never saw the person who pushed him.
“He just walked away like he didn’t do it,” Pinez said. “A lot of people on the platform saw. I don’t know what his agenda was.”
Pinez suffered only a cut to his lip. He was taken to New York-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital where he got stitches and have his teeth checked.
He said he is grateful to be alive and has been trying to keep his worried wife calm.
“I don’t want to think about what happened. It could happen to anybody. So many crazy people.”
Pinez said he doesn’t think the platform pusher had it out for him. He urged his attacker to “get help.”
“What can I say?” Pinez said. “I don’t think you can do that to anybody.”
The person who shoved Pinez remains at large.