Heroically stopped train before it hit woman standing on tracks
Two MTA employees gave a stranger a second lease on life when they teamed up to save her from a likely fatal accident in a Brooklyn subway tunnel. Signal maintenance worker Tony Mannino, 54, was on the platform of the Newkirk Plaza stop in Flatbush on Aug. 7 waiting for the morning rush hour to end when he realized something was wrong.
“It was around 10:15 a.m. when I hear a lot of screams,” Mannino said. “So I look over my shoulder and I see this lady on the tracks just standing there.”
The woman, who Mannino said looked like a commuter heading to work, stared ahead absently in the middle of the Q line tracks as onlookers yelled in panic.
Realizing the station has a slight curve when trains enter, Mannino knew an incoming motorman would not see her in time to pull the emergency brakes.
“I rushed on the tracks, crossing over to the north track, and sure enough as soon as I got there I see a train barreling down,” Mannino said. “It was Larry,” he added, referring to train operator Larry Moreno, 50.
Moreno was on his regular 10:10 a.m. Q line route from Stillwell Ave. in Coney Island to 96th St. on the Upper East Side when the train began entering the Newkirk Plaza station.
“As I’m coming down I see an MTA vest,” Moreno said. “The vest caught my attention.”
It was Mannino running on the tracks, Moreno recalled, “and he’s coming directly in the path of my train.”
Confused by his colleague’s behavior — and unable to see the woman standing on the tracks — Moreno immediately responded
“I applied the maximum amount of brakes that I could,” he said. “And I still didn’t know what was going on, and as the train comes around the curve I realize [there was someone on the tracks],” he said. “I jump out of my seat and start praying, ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ and the train is slowing down but not stopping.”
Moreno and Mannino could only watch in horror as the train slowed, unsure if it would stop before hitting the woman.
It finally did — a mere 3 feet from where the woman stood on the tracks.
“She was very lucky,” Mannino said. “If Larry didn’t [stop] the train when he did and I had not gotten out to that track immediately, she would have gotten hit.”
Thanks to their quick thinking and bravery in a life-or-death situation, Mannino and Moreno have been nominated for the Daily News Hometown Heroes award.
The MTA workers got the woman off the tracks and an ambulance was called. But the woman, who never gave them her name, decided to leave before help arrived.
Mannino, who doesn’t usually work at Newkirk Plaza, has since come to realize they were meant to be at the station that day.
“It was not her time to go because the timing was perfect,” Mannino said. “If I wasn’t there at that location and hadn’t seen her, she wouldn’t have made it.
“God did not want her to die that day,” he said, adding that “maybe she realized it wasn’t her time to go.
I’m hoping she got that message, because you don’t get a second chance. And she definitely got one.”
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