Wesley Autry trudged through the turnstiles of the New York City Subway, headed for another boring, routine day. He was going to drop his two daughters off with their mother and then head out to his construction job where he would be helping to build a library downtown. It was all part of the daily grind, and he didn't really think anything of it. Then, all of a sudden, as he passed onto the Subway platform he saw a young man flip out, have a fucking seizure, and collapse on the Subway platform.
Autry, being the good samaritan that he was, rushed over to help the guy, who by now was flipping out like he'd been hit by a stun gun or just found out he won the lottery or something. Autry used a ball-point pen to pry the dude's mouth open to prevent him from biting his tongue off. After a few minutes, the guy seemed to come back to his senses. Autry helped the man to his feet, and asked him if he was feeling alright. The guy looked at Autry but said nothing. Seconds later, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed again.
This time, however, he didn't fall onto the relative safety of the platform. He fell off onto the fucking subway tracks.
Wesley Autry unhesitatingly jumped down from the platform to help the kid. He grabbed the semi-conscious seizure victim, asked him if he was alright, and then quickly tried to lift him back up onto the platform. The kid was disoriented, unresponsive, and only semi-conscious. Wesley continued to try and get this dude up off the tracks when he heard a noise that made him sick to his stomach.
Um... oh shit.
The train was coming down the track at breakneck speed. When faced with a split-second decision, Wesley Autry did what a true badass would do: He threw the kid down onto the tracks, jumped on top of him, and tried to get as close to the ground as possible.
But even this wouldn't be easy. The other guy was so disoriented that he just started panicking and trying to fight Autry off of him. So Autry not only had to worry about the train hurtling towards him, but now he also had to wrestle this kid into a complete body lock if he wanted any chance of making it out of this alive. They fought briefly, Autry slapped a hold on this kid and flattened both of them to the ground.
The train blew overhead so close to the two men that Wesley's wool hat was torn by the undercarriage of the subway car. It screeched to a halt, but both men were safe. Autry called out to assure his two daughters he was safe as the Subway Police went to work trying to extricate him from underneath the train. Twenty minutes later, Wesley Autry was being hailed as a hero.
It's hard not to respect how balls-out it was of this guy to not only jump down onto the tracks to save a kid having a seizure, but to try and squeeze himself between the tracks and the bottom of the train. He very easily could have abandoned this kid to save himself, and his plan could have just as easily failed, but yet he risked his life to try and rescue someone in need. His courage and quick-thinking not only make him a badass; They make him a hero.
