Good Samaritans Rescue Pregnant Woman Who Fell Onto Subway Tracks

During Friday morning's commute, a pregnant woman tumbled onto the subway trackbed after fainting on the platform—one of the most frightening possibilities that straphangers face in the city's sweltering, trash-smelling subway platforms, IMO. Luckily, however, two men who saw her fall immediately worked together to pull her up and to safety.

The FDNY responded to reports of an injured woman at 34th Street-Penn Station around 8:11 a.m. on Friday, transporting her to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. According to the NY Post, one man jumped down onto the tracks to get her, while another—50-year-old real estate developer George Palladino—rushed to the edge of the tracks to help her back onto the platform.

"I was like 10 feet away [when she fell]," Palladino told the Post. "I ran over there. I got on my hands and knees on the edge of the platform. I reached down to get her and was able to grab her hand and pull her up."

"When she fell, she must have banged her head on the tracks," he added, noting that the woman was en route to a doctor's appointment when she fainted. "She seemed disoriented, she was holding my hand tight."

The woman wounded her head in the fall, but the entire episode seems to have concluded almost as quickly as it began. Remarkably, the Post reports, train service proceeded without a hiccup—at least, without a hiccup related to this incident.

In any case, dizziness is an unfortunately common feature of pregnancy, related to hormonal changes and lowered blood pressure. This, along with the fact that it is simply more taxing to maneuver through a crowded car with a fetus in your uterus than it is with a dang backpack on your back, constitutes one compelling reason why you should always offer pregnant riders your seat, and/or a helping hand off the train tracks.