A 3-year-old boy was rescued by railway workers earlier this month as they saw him walking on the tracks headed toward an electrified rail in an area near the Hudson River in New York.
The boy, who was described as having non-verbal autism, was spotted by engineers and railroad employees who worked to stop trains going both ways near the child and cut the power to the third rail of the system.
The third rail of the train system is electrified.
‘This toddler’s running on the third rail, over,’ a radio call can be heard in the video. “I need that rail killed immediately.’
Once the boy was spotted by personnel on a train that was on the same track as the child, assistant conductor Marcus Higgins got down from the train and was recorded by cameras running 40 yards down the track towards him. Higgins scooped him up and took him to the side of the track.
The train then moved down the track to pick the pair up.
‘This is unbelievable, I thought that was a bag,’ said one of the men operating the train. ‘No I could tell by the way he was moving,’ responded another. ‘I just couldn’t tell how big the person was.’
The toddler had wandered away from a park about 50 yards from the tracks where his mother had brought him to play.
The boy’s mother said she turned her back briefly and the boy scramble away and toward the tracks. Police saw the woman and her daughter sobbing on a street corner looking for the boy.
They took the two to the Tarrytown Station where they were reunited with the boy.
