CHICAGO (CBS) — An Army veteran pulled a woman from the Red Line tracks Tuesday morning as a train was barreling toward them. CBS 2’s Brad Edwards reports he came to his Red Line stop at Argyle for the 9:05 train and in an instant it became life or death.
Brian Eckerman jumped to action when a he saw a woman he thought had fallen on the train tracks.
“I saw that she was reaching for the third rail and not actively trying to get up,” said Eckerman.
But she didn’t fall. She likely wanted to die, but not on his watch.
“Thank God it all worked out,” said Eckerman.
Eckerman learned electrical currents in the U.S. Army reserves, and with a ballerina’s precision he danced with an unwilling partner over the first third rail.
“So then I also had to go across the second one and I kind of had to man handle her cause there was no other choice so I kind of had to whip her,” said Eckerman. “I look up and see the train is rushing toward us.”
But the train stopped.
———————————————-
11-Hours ago Brian took to Reddit to offer this thoughts on the experience…
“Hi, this is me, Brian. I just wanted to post some of my thoughts on the whole matter to give some perspective to what all happened. First I just wanted to say these last few days have been a whirlwind of friends and family calling/emailing/texting/fb’ing telling me how much of a hero I am and stuff like this. That is nice and I really do appreciate the sentiment and them telling me they are glad I’m ok. But besides that, what I think is being lost in this “you’re a hero!” type of stuff, is where the focus of this all should be, and it really makes me feel uncomfortable and uneasy inside.
I couldn’t really put my finger on it at first of why I don’t like being called that and would much rather have just gone to work and went home and that was that. This all blew up because my gf made an inadvertant post on fb about the incident, not even mentioning me, but her friends made it evident it was me, and that was that, it snowballed from there. I didn’t even come out about this on fb until I kind of had no choice since people kept posting on my wall about it. Next thing I know CBS is at my door on my way home from work. That’s fine. As some of you know, I’ve been on TV many many times throughout the years with my old company BDC (btw thanks for the kind words and shout outs regarding that guys/gals!) so I didn’t care to be on TV or get my “15 minutes.”
Anyway I digress, sorry if this is rambling on. What really makes this not sit right is I feel the attention should not be on me at all. It could have been any body else who did what I did, that doesn’t matter. The fact remains that depression/suicide is a genuine concern and needs to be addressed moreso than it is now. We need to focus on educating ourselves about signs to look for (both in ourselves and others) and eliminate the negative stigma depression/bipolar has. There is zero shame in seeking out help. It makes you no less of a man/woman to do so. It takes genuine courage to seek help and get treatment.
As much as I at one time in my life was a public personality with BDC, for this I would much rather shy away from the spotlight (I was happy I was able to give my Mom credit, she deserves more shine than I do) and lets hope that this woman, this mystery woman, who I don’t even know her name, or saw her face, is going to be ok. It’s well within her right to remain private and not come forward, but I really really just hope and pray that she has somebody to help her. A loved one. A great doctor. Somebody. Something. People keep coming up to me shaking my hand but I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t care about that and do not want props or to be called a hero. I really just want to KNOW that she’s going to be ok. That’s all. I’m fine. I get to go home to a great apartment and wonderful girlfriend and wake up and go to a great job. It’s her and not just her per se, but what and who she represents that we should all be talking about. Not me.
Ok well sorry about the long novel here. Thanks for reading.
If you want to learn more please visit http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
and always take seriously somebody’s threats of harming themselves. You can’t go back in time once it’s done.
-Brian”
Kindness Blog 