Irish connection leads to laughs during New York subway rescue

A fireman, a paramedic and a woman they were treating under a subway train in New York started laughing after finding out they were all from Ireland.

The paramedic, Niall O’Shaughnessy, from Limerick, treated Mary Downey, 22, who had fallen onto the tracks in the station where three trains passed just feet from her.

Niall had just gone on duty at 6am last Sunday when he got a call about a “man under” at 49th Street Station, located at the north end of Times Square.

He told RTÉ’s John Murray yesterday that a “man under” meant a person had been hit by a train and was still under it.

When he arrived at the scene, a rescue operation was already under way.

After assessing Mary, who was conscious throughout, and attending to her immediate medical needs, Niall started talking with the firefighter, Sean Cummins, who was getting her ready to be extricated from underneath the train.

Niall noticed that Sean had an Irish accent and discovered he was from Dublin. When Niall said he was from Limerick, Mary joined in and told them she was from Belfast.

“Believe it or not, we had a laugh about it underneath the train,” he said.

Niall, who has been working as a paramedic with the New York fire department for eight years, said it was not uncommon to get a “man under” call — it happened once or twice a day in the city.

Whenever he got such a call, he expected the worst. Mary, who broke her shoulder, had been lucky to have been able to walk away from it.

“Usually, these type of calls are fatal and over very quickly. We did not realise at the start that three trains had run over her. We thought it was just the one, which would have been bad enough.”

Asked how she had survived, Niall said that sometimes there was a little depression in between the two railway tracks and a person could roll into it to avoid being run over by the train.

“I reckon that what she did and then when she tried to get back onto the platform that can be from three to six feet up, another train came in and she ducked down underneath the platform where there is a little alcove.

“To be honest, she was blessed, completely blessed that there happened to be these areas and she happened to recognise them and tucked herself in.”

Mary was rescued after the driver of the third train saw her arms and legs moving.