Subway conductor, passengers save little girl from suicidal mother in Manhattan

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A subway conductor and train passengers helped save the life of a woman and her young child, after she threatened to jump on the tracks in Manhattan.

And the child was saying, 'Ow! Ow!', and the woman was grabbing her arm," said Warren Cox, an MTA conductor.

Cox told Eyewitness News, at first he figured it was a mom disciplining her 9-year-old daughter on the platform of the number 6 train at 59th and Lexington.

It was last Friday at around 3:30 p.m. on the uptown side when passengers first called him over to help.

"After observing for a couple of seconds I said, 'you know, is there a problem?' And she said, 'No, there's no problem,'" Cox said.

But Mr. Cox and about half a dozen subway riders weren't convinced.

So he stood between the woman, the child and any oncoming trains, and the passengers stayed put as well.

"Almost in a semi-circle around the woman and the child, encouraging the child, 'nothing's going to happen to you, we are all right here,'" Cox said.

In fact, one passenger then helped immeasurably.

"And she told me, in a very low voice, 'you know, she threw her coat, and the child's coat and her cell phone, in the garbage,'" Cox said. "And then the severity of it hit me. This wasn't just a woman that was very agitated; this was really what the passengers feared it was."

And so Cox was fearing the worst and feeling surreal.

"It's rough, it's rough, you see things like this happening to other people," Cox said.

Still he kept it together and even going for some levity as he said, "But she's still going to have to eat her broccoli every now and then. You know I tried to make her laugh."

In the end, Cox says he's not the real hero; instead it was the passengers who helped.

"They saw something and they did more than say something, they did something," Cox said.