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Woman Who Fell on N Train Tracks Saved by Alert Driver

By DNAinfo Staff on August 29, 2010 10:58am

The driver of a speeding N train stopped just in time Saturday.
The driver of a speeding N train stopped just in time Saturday.
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Flickr/WallyG

By Nina Mandell

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — A woman is lucky to be alive after she reportedly fell on to the subway tracks Saturday, only to be saved by an alert driver.

Bystanders frantically waved and screamed to notify the motorman as he approached the station that the unidentified woman had fallen on to the N train tracks at the Fifth Avenue/59th Street Station about 7 a.m., the Daily News reported.

The driver, Francis Lusk, spotted the woman as she dropped on to the tracks about 300 feet from his train, the News reported. But he managed to bring the cars to a screeching halt just 70 feet from the woman's body.

“She walked right off the platform,” Lusk told the paper. “I was shocked.”

Lusk radioed the control center to have the power turned off and then rushed to help the woman, who was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center, the News reported.

"Thanks to the quick thinking and actions of one of our employees this incident — which could have had very tragic consequences — instead had a very happy ending," Tom Prendergast, NYC Transit president told the paper.