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Man pulled from train tracks at last second after falling in California

'I saw out of the corner of my eye, I saw him going in the trackway. He came to the side, and I figured out he wasn’t going to make it. So I grabbed him, pulled him up on the platform'

Clark Mindock
New York
Tuesday 05 November 2019 16:16 GMT
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Railway worker pulls passenger to safety after he falls on train tracks in California

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Dramatic video shows a last-second rescue of a man just before getting hit by a train in Oakland, California.

The man was grabbed by a station employee at a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station that was crowded following an NFL football game on Sunday night.

In the video, the employee can be seen snatching up the man as he appears to misstep and fall over the yellow safety strip just as a train approaches.

The hero transportation worker has since been identified as BART transportation supervisor John O’Connor, who had been stationed on the platform to help with crowd control following a Raiders game.

In video taken by others on the platform and posted online, Mr O’Connor and the man he saved can be seen embracing after the incident.

“He was sitting right there and he put his hand out and that’s when I’m like, dude, you almost didn’t make it,” Mr O’Connor later told KPIX 5.

Describing the rescue, he said: “The young man just walked, I saw out of the corner of my eye I saw him going in the trackway. He came to the side, and I figured out he wasn’t going to make it. So I grabbed him, pulled him up on the platform.”

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