NEW YORK —A personal trainer jumps down onto the subway tracks to save an unconscious man as a train barrels down. A trucker stops to pull a driver from a burning car. A quick-thinking plumber uses his belt as a tourniquet to save a woman badly injured in a crash.
In New York City, which often has a keep-to-yourself, don’t-get-involved reputation, at least a dozen good Samaritans this past year were willing to risk their own safety to save a stranger.
“It’s the way I was brought up: Always look out for each other,” said Dennis Codrington, the personal trainer who, along with two others, helped pull up a bleeding, unconscious man who had fallen onto the tracks of the No. 1 train late one February night.
Codrington was headed home from a party when he saw the 6-foot-tall man at the edge of the platform and then disappear. About 55 people are struck by New York subway trains and die every year.
He and the two others jumped down to hoist the bleeding, heavy stranger up — as the time clock flashed that another train was due in the station in one minute.
“It was really nerve-wracking,” Codrington said. “But we couldn’t leave him there.”
Miami emergency room doctor Ben Abo, 32, found himself in a similar dilemma at a New Jersey commuter train stop in Greenwich Village during his summer vacation to New York City, when a stranger took an extra step and fell off the platform.
“He went down right over the edge. He was walking as if the platform was still there,” Abo said.
The man fell headfirst and lay on the tracks, bleeding heavily. Abo looked to see whether a train was coming and jumped in, yelling for the people on the platform to pull a fire alarm and get help. Sweating, he heaved the man up overhead, back onto the platform, as someone helped from above, and he then tried to pull himself back up, too.
He felt a gush of wind and saw headlights reflecting off the wall.
“I said to myself: ‘You have one chance to get up,’ ” he said.
He made it and set to work trying to stop the bleeding, while a crowd gathered around him — holding up smartphones to take video.
Psychologists say some people have the right mix of qualities it takes for risky heroic acts — altruism, courage, knowing the right thing and being reflexive about it, as well as the ability to inhibit fear that stops most people from getting involved.
“It’s not one hero gene. It’s a very complex set of characteristics that converge and that person is unique, and thank God for them,” said Dr. Rachel Yehuda, a psychologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Videotaping onlookers surrounded 44-year-old plumber David Justino this summer as he tried to stop a tourist from bleeding to death after an out-of-control taxi struck her, severing one leg and badly injuring the other. He used his belt as a tourniquet and poured bottled water over her severed limbs, which were gushing blood.
“I had no choice,” he said. “I had to help her, someone had to.”
Truck driver Alex Mitchell, 37, of Queens, was alone on the Long Island Expressway two months ago about 1 a.m. when he saw a man in an SUV crash into a tree. Mitchell pulled over and ran to the scene.
“There was a flickering of lights, and by the time I got there, it was a big ball of fire and smoke,” he said. He reached the man, yanked him up and helped him away from the burning vehicle.
