Accidents happen, but some have more consequences than others. Luckily, someone was looking out for Rayshawn when he made the mistake that could have cost him his life.
When John O’Connor reported for duty at Bay Area Rapid Transit that morning, he had no idea that he’d be hailed a hero before the day was done.
John O’ Connor is a transportation supervisor for the Northern California Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). He’d been working there for 24 years. If experience had taught him anything, it was to be prepared.
“I’ve had people fall in front of my train or jump to get their hat or a lot of different scenarios. I mean, there’s a multitude of stories we can tell about it,” John told reporters in a press conference.
John knew that he would have to be more vigilant than usual on this particular day, though.
It was 5:20 pm on November 3rd, 2019. Passengers were pouring into the Oakland station after the Raiders’ home victory over the Detroit Lions.
The crowd was more riled-up than usual and John was standing by the stairway, trying to keep them at bay.
Out of the corner of his eye, John noticed a young, intoxicated man stumbling over the yellow safety line and fall over – right into the path of the oncoming train.
Surveillance video footage from BART captured the dramatic scene as it unfolded.
In the video, you can see that John wasted no time. He leaps into action to save the man.
He runs over, grabs him by the shoulders, and pulls him off the tracks – out of the path of the oncoming train that’s literally seconds away.
John spoke more about the rescue at a press conference at Coliseum Station the next day:
“It seemed a lot slower than it actually happened (on video),” John said in a news release from BART. “He came to the side, I figured he wasn’t going to make it so I grabbed him and pulled him up to the platform. That’s what we do. We got foreworkers, train operators, station agents who deal with this on a daily basis. We preach safety, and we practice it.”
The story of the daring rescue spread quickly, and soon people were calling John a hero!
But was the man okay?
A video of John and the man he pulled off the tracks was taken just after the incident and shared on Twitter. The emotional video shows the man and his rescuer embracing.
“He was sitting right there and he put his hand out and that’s when I gave him a hug. I’m like, Dude, you almost didn’t make it,” John told KPIX 5.
BART PD officers took the man to a local hospital for evaluation. Later, John even retrieved the man’s cellphone from the trackway.
It turns out that the man he’d rescued’s name was Rayshawn, and he’d see him again.
On November 8, just a few days after the harrowing incident, John met up with Rayshawn for a “hug and a celebration of life.”
But John doesn’t see himself as a hero – he just did what was right:
“It’s what we’re supposed to do,” he told KPIX. “You know, we’re all human beings. Life is precious, so thank God he gets to see another day. We both made it out, you know?”
To see John O’Connor spring into action to save a man’s life, watch the video below.
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