The unemployed subway hero who saved a baby in a stroller after it was swept by a strong wind onto an elevated subway track in Brooklyn was reunited with the family on Wednesday – right after getting a new job.
“That’s the little man that got me a job today,” Delroy Simmonds told the New York Daily News.
Simmonds visited the boy and his mother Wednesday at Brookdale Hospital, where the child was being treated for a small head injury. The baby is expected to be OK.
Simmonds said the mother thanked him, and he shrugged off talk about his heroism. He pointed out that he's a father and would expect anyone else to do the same for his child.
"I don't really feel like much of a hero," he told NBCNewYork.com. "I didn't really think, I just reacted."
Simmonds was on his way to a job interview at about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a powerful blast of air carried the stroller from the elevated track onto the J train platform at Van Siclen Avenue. The baby and stroller both landed on the tracks.
Simmonds immediately jumped onto the tracks, rescuing the baby before the next train came into the station.
Simmonds missed his job interview but says he was offered a job only a day later as a maintenance worker at Kennedy Airport on Wednesday. He starts in two weeks.
“Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Simmonds told the Daily News was his response to the job offer. “I’m just excited to start working.”
Simmonds said he received a slew of employment offers Wednesday from people who heard of the incident.
“It says a lot about his character that he would jump on the tracks to save a little boy,” Guy Rodriguez, project manager for the janitorial company, told the Daily News. “We are happy to hire Delroy. We are honored.”
NBCNewYork.com contributed to this report.
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