By Emerson Clarridge
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
Daniel Fitzpatrick stared into the eyes of the young woman dressed in a black velour sweatsuit. She looked catatonic, he said, “not with it.” She was wearing a plastic wristband from Brooklyn’s Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, just across Flushing Avenue from the elevated subway platform where they stood.
Moments later, the off-duty city EMT recalled yesterday in an interview at his Franklin Square home, he found himself gripping the woman in a bear hug - trying to prevent her from jumping into the path of an oncoming J train on Thursday afternoon.
“If you go, you’re gonna take me with you!” he remembered yelling in an effort to make the woman feel guilty. “You’re gonna kill me too!”
No response. Blank stare. She didn’t seem to care, he said.
So he just hung on.
With his spontaneous act, Fitzpatrick, 38, joined Wesley Autrey, who saved a young man from being run over by a train in Harlem on Jan. 2, as a local hero. Both were hailed for imperiling themselves to rescue others.
Fitzpatrick “didn’t hesitate to put his life on the line for a complete stranger,” FDNY Chief of Department Salvatore Cassano said. “He displayed great courage in the face of danger and saved a woman from certain death.”
Fitzpatrick, who today marks his third anniversary as an EMT, said he had been standing on the platform about 4 p.m. He had just come from Woodhull himself, where he attended a training session to become a paramedic, and he was talking with a young man who had noticed his FDNY jacket and said he wanted to join the fire department.
From behind him, Fitzpatrick heard a man’s voice: “Yo, FDNY, this lady’s gonna jump!”
At first, Fitzpatrick said, he thought the bystander was joking. But when he looked to the end of the platform, he spotted the woman and noticed she appeared to be emotionally disturbed.
He walked toward her and got close enough to make conversation. He tried to win her trust by asking her if she wanted to go for a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. She looked surprised but did not say anything.
“She started to make her way to the tracks,” he said. Fitzpatrick followed, to a catwalk just above the tracks.
“I can’t let her get too far,” Fitzpatrick remembered thinking. “I ran towards her. I pinned her against the railing.”
A train was coming into the station and the woman was putting up a fight, trying to wriggle her way free. She kicked her legs.
“I could see the silver of the train passing,” he said.
The man Fitzpatrick had been talking to on the platform was now trying to assist him by holding his head out of the way of the train, a move Fitzpatrick says saved him from being struck.
“I feel like if he didn’t do that I would’ve been hit by the train,” he said.
Fitzpatrick recalled yelling up to the large group of onlookers, asking for someone to call 911. Instead, he said, people held up their cell phones and snapped photos of the unfolding drama.
The woman continued to fight against him, but Fitzpatrick gripped her in a bear hug and held on tightly, waiting for help to come. Fitzpatrick, who weighs about 190 pounds, said he was tiring from the effort. The woman, he said, was significantly larger than he is.
Finally, a city police officer arrived, and together they handcuffed the woman. Fitzpatrick sat on her to keep her from moving, and responding officers placed the woman in a bag and took her to Bellevue Hospital Center, where she was listed in stable condition. An updated condition was not available yesterday.
Fitzpatrick worked for 10 years on Wall Street before leaving to become an EMT. His career switch was affirmed on Sept. 11, 2001, when - while still in training - he watched city firefighters and police respond to the terrorist attacks and felt useless.
“It’s like you couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I can’t deal with that.”
His mom, Mae Fitzpatrick of South Ozone Park, said yesterday she couldn’t be more proud of her son.
“I think it’s just wonderful,” she said.