2 save person on tracks as BART train nears
It was a typical Thursday morning for San Francisco residents Josh Hyman and Blake Garrett.
Just after 7:30 a.m., both men were waiting at the 24th Street Mission Station for a Pittsburgbound BART train, the first leg of their respective commutes to jobs in the East Bay. The two men had never met, despite taking the same train almost every morning.
But in a harrowing instant, their lives would intersect.
Both men noticed a person, apparently in their 30s, who seemed to be experiencing a mental health episode. Pacing around the platform, the person was talking to themselves, screaming and intermittently laying down on the train platform, said Garrett, 29.
Garrett noticed the person first — and immediately called BART Police to request a wellness check. He was concerned about the individual, who kept getting closer to the edge of the platform.
“Next thing I know, they’re in the tracks,” said Garrett. “And I looked over and saw a train was starting to arrive.”
Further down the platform, Hyman saw the same person crawling onto the tracks, he said.
Hyman, 46, said Garrett immediately walked over to the person and said, “Give me your hand.” Without thinking, Hyman did the same. The person desperately raised their arms.
They couldn’t haul the person up to the platform on their first attempt, Garrett said, as the screen announcing arrival times showed the train was about reach the station. Garrett said he could see the train’s light growing from inside the tunnel.
Finally, the two men managed to pull the person up on their stomach. The person just laid there and whimpered, said Hyman.
“And then the train came, right after that,” he said. “Like 30 seconds later.”
Pulsing with adrenaline, Hyman hopped on his train and left. He waved goodbye to Garrett,
who said he decided to stay with the person until a BART attendant arrived at the scene.
A spokesperson for BART wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Moments later, the person got up and began to wander around the platform, Garrett said. He kept an eye on them, worried they might wander onto the tracks again. But then the person got on a train heading the other direction, Garrett said.
Over the course of that morning, Hyman said he had an overwhelming need to connect with the other man who’d helped him. It was his first ever post on Reddit, he said.
Once he got into work, Garrett said he checked Twitter to see if anyone had posted about the incident but found nothing. A coworker told him about a Reddit post that read: “To the guy who helped me pull a guy off the tracks at the 24th street BART station just now, glad you were there,” the post read.
The two Good Samaritans exchanged a few messages back and forth, thanking each other for their service.
“That guy, he would have been dead,” said Hyman, reflecting on what would have happened had Garrett not been there. “And we would have been right there to see it.”
In the hours since, they’ve been trading off thank-yous.
“I was raised to help people who need help,” said Hyman in an interview. “I’m glad there was somebody else on the track who thinks that way, who was raised that way — or who just became that way.”