WILLIAMSBURG — A Queens singer-songwriter became a guardian angel for an elderly woman who fell on the tracks at the Hewes Street subway station Thursday morning.
Matt Southerland, 32, who also trims hair at a Carroll Gardens barbershop, said he and two other men pulled the disoriented woman off the railbed, after she fell and could not get back up on the platform.
If it hadn't been for an absent-minded commuter error, he might not have been there to intervene.
It was just before noon when Southerland, who was immersed in one of his own composition of pop-rock infused soul, took the wrong train from his home in Astoria to his job at Persons of Interest barbershop on Smith Street.
While transferring to the M train at the Hewes Street station at Broadway, the former death metal singer heard the kind of shrieks that he's used to hearing in music.
"This woman was screaming, 'Help, help,'" Southerland said.
The woman was sitting upright between the first two rails, grimacing in pain.
"She was disoriented when she was down there," he said. "She took a hard fall. There was pain in her face. She was trying to move around a little bit."
A crowd of good Samaritans quickly gathered to help, but an MTA worker warned them not to go onto the tracks.
As the transit worker left to shut down power in the station, one of the men jumped down and hoisted the woman to the lip of platform, Southerland said.
Southerland and another man helped pull her safely off the tracks.
The woman was taken to Bellevue Medical Center, fire officials said. They could not immediately provide her condition.
"I've been thinking about it all day, realizing everything happens for a reason," Southerland said.
With reporting by Ben Fractenberg
