InterAksyon.com
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They call him the superhero without a cape.
Unemployed for over a year, Brooklyn resident Delroy Simmonds, 30, was on his way to an interview for a maintenance job at a warehouse Tuesday afternoon.
He missed the interview, however, because while waiting for the subway train at the Van Siclen Avenue Station, he spotted a baby still in its stroller being swept to the tracks by a strong wind.
"I jumped down and I snatched the baby up," Simmonds told the New York Daily News in an interview. "The train was coming around the corner as I lifted the baby from the tracks. I really wasn’t thinking."
The nine-month-old boy's mother, Maria Zamara, who was with her three other kids on the platform, was rooted to the spot in her shock.
Witnesses told the NY Daily News that Simmonds placed the baby in its stroller back on the platform, the incoming train honking its horn. He was able to pull himself back to safety just as the train halted "halfway into the station," according to the publication.
The rescued baby, who "had a big gash on his forehead," according to a commuter on the scene as interviewed by the NY Daily News, was treated for injuries on his face and head at the Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn.
"It was the fatherly instinct," Simmonds told the NY Daily News. "I have two daughters of my own: 8 and 5. I was being a father. I would have done it for any baby."
And it seems the publicity has been helpful for the Good Samaritan, who told the NY Daily News, "Everybody is making me out to be some sort of superhero. I'm just a normal person. Anybody in that situation should have done what I did."
He was hired Wednesday, just a day after the incident, by ABM Janitorial Services at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"It says a lot about his character that he would jump on the tracks to save a little boy," said ABM project manager Guy Rodriguez to the NY Daily News. "We are happy to hire Delroy. We are honored."
On the same day, Simmonds visited the baby he rescued at the hospital. "That’s the little man that got me a job today," he said, upon seeing the little boy whose head was bandaged. "It feels amazing, just seeing him alive." InterAksyon.com
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