Off-Duty TSA Employee Saves a Woman's Life in a Very Brave Way

An off-duty Chicago TSA employee jumped from a subway platform onto the tracks as a train was approaching to save a woman who had fallen on Wednesday.

Off-duty TSA worker Eddie Palacios jumped onto the subway tracks to save a woman. (Image source: DNAInfo Chicago)

"I heard somebody yell, 'She fell, she fell! You gotta get out of the way! The train is coming!' So I turned around to see what they were talking about," Eddie Palacios, 50, told DNAInfo Chicago.

That's when he made the decision to act: "The first thing I thought to myself was, ‘OK, I’ve got an orange hoodie on. They are bound to see me.'"

“And I jumped on the train [tracks] so they can at least see me, and I’d have time [to get] the person out of the way," Palacios told DNAInfo. "I was hoping someone would jump down to help them up because I could see they couldn’t get up.”

A DNAInfo Chicago staffer also was on the platform and videotaped Palacios waving his arms to stop the train, which stopped short of the platform. The woman was pulled back up to the platform by her hair, DNAInfo reported. She sat on the ground briefly, bleeding from her head, and said, "I just slipped."

She then rose and ran up the escalator; later she was apprehended and taken to a hospital in an ambulance. Her identity isn't known.

The CTA Blue Line alternates between above-ground tracks and subways; the Chicago Avenue stop where the incident occurred is a subway.

After his heroics, Palacios didn't rest on his laurels — the checkpoint worker at O'Hare International Airport hopped on the next train so he could start his day.

“We’re good in America, but we still need each other,” Palacious told DNAInfo. “I hope one day if I need something, my kids need something, somebody else needs something, somebody will be there. That’s what I hope and pray for.”

Watch the clip below, via Jon Hansen of DNAInfo Chicago:

(H/T: Mediaite)