What would you do if you were in a situation to save someone’s life? Would you do whatever you could to save that person’s life? Now, here’s the next question. What would you do if you had to risk your own life to save another’s? This man was presented with this exact situation, and what he did was something that few people would choose to do.Jonathan Kulig was in a horrible mood as he marched down the steps to the subway. There really isn’t anything worse than getting called into work on a Saturday night, and that’s exactly where Jonathan was heading. Jonathon felt that he was just an unlucky person, but he would soon find out how wrong he was.
Jonathon was about to leave the L train station at Third Avenue and 14th Street. The 29-year-old man had walked this route many times before on his way to work so he knew exactly what he was doing. It was almost as if his brain was on auto-pilot.
Jonathon worked as an engineer for Con Edison, and at the time, he was more concerned with getting to work on time, rather than paying attention to what was going on around him. The iconic clock tower at the Con Edison Building would remind Jonathon that he was going to be late for work.
Jonathon’s concentration was broken by a few shrieks coming from across the station. As he noticed that a group of passengers gathering around something, Jonathon moved over to see what it was that everyone was looking at. “I hear people kind of making a little noise saying, ‘Oh my God,'” Jonathon explained. “And then I look down as I’m walking I can see something moving down there, realized it was a person.”
Somehow, a man had actually fallen onto the tracks. What made matters worse, though, was that the man wasn’t moving or answering any of the calls from the passengers on the platform above him. No one could tell what was wrong with the man, but it was very clear that the man was in danger..
“The announcement came on, saying that the train was about a minute away. The guy wasn’t moving, so I knew I had to go down there and get him, otherwise that train was going to hit him,” Jonathon explained. Looking around, Jonathon didn’t see any kind of way to let the subway conductor know what was going on so he could stop the train. Jonathon immediately understood that someone in the train station would have to help the man.
No one was helping as it was. For some reason, people only wanted to stare in horror, some even took out their cell phones to film the dangerous situation. Even though Jonathon was two tracks away from the man on the other side of the station, he immediately rushed to help the man on the tracks.
Luckily, Jonathon had a good idea of how to get around the train tracks. Through his job with Con Edison, he was required to take a subway maintenance safety. Because of the course, Jonathon knew where to step, and what was more important, where not to step.
Jonathon immediately identified the biggest obstacle on the track: the third rail. You see, the first two rails hold up the trains driving by, but the third rail is what powers them with intense amounts of dangerous electricity. If someone even so much as brushed the third rail, they would die immediately. Needless to say, Jonathon needed to be very careful.
Keeping the severity of the situation in mind, Jonathon crossed the first rail and then the second rail, which was full of electricity. He was near the stranger now, who was apparently unconscious. And to make matters worse, the man was lying in a pool of water, which would make the perfect conductor for the electricity.
Treading very carefully, Jonathon grabbed the young man and held him in his arms. Jonathon was strong enough to lift the man, but he had to move very slowly because the man was quite heavy. Unfortunately, time was something that Jonathon didn’t have very much of.
Jonathon looked to the left and then to the right. If a train came out of nowhere, Jonathon wouldn’t have had enough time to get off the tracks, which wouldn’t be good for either one of the men. But luckily, there was no train in sight.
With the help of a few other people, Jonathon was able to lift the man safely up onto the train platform. The man slumped over for a few minutes. “He was responding with nods when I was asking him questions about, you know, if he was okay and whatnot,” Jonathon said. A person standing by was able to capture the entire life-saving interaction on his cell phone.
It only took a minute after Jonathon and the man climbed to safety until a train quickly whizzed by the spot where the man had been lying unconscious on the tracks. If Jonathon had taken just one more minute to jump down to the man, he wouldn’t have been so lucky. For the first time in his entire life, Jonathon was more than grateful that the train hadn’t arrived when it was supposed to.
As soon as the police and EMTs arrived at the scene, they tried to piece together what had happened. It was clear that Jonathon was a hero, but they needed to try and figure out why the man had fallen down onto the tracks, to begin with. Was the man intoxicated or sick?
Come to find out, it was something far more serious than being a little too drunk that caused the young man to fall on the tracks. Apparently, the 23-year-old man had suffered from a stroke while he was on the edge of the platform, which caused him to lose balance and fall on the tracks below.
As soon as Jonathon saw that the victim was safely secured in the ambulance, he made his way to work. In fact, he even made it to work on time, where he went about his normal business as usual! As it turns out, this man was more like Superman than like Clark Kent.
However, within a few hours, Jonathon’s brave rescue had gone viral. But, of course, Jonathon didn’t believe that he had done anything special. “If I didn’t pick him up, that train would’ve got him. ‘Cause there wasn’t really anybody else that was jumping down to do anything,” he explained.
Obviously, there were many other people who believed that Jonathon was a brave person. Actually, Jonathon was honored at a community meeting by the NYPD, who gave him the 2017 Russo Hero Award. Jonathon was more than excited about the honor, but he did get another opportunity that excited him a little bit more.
Considering that he was definitely a newsworthy bachelor, he was actually the perfect candidate for the hit reality dating show, Love Connection. Jonathon’s moment in the spotlight was shared with three beautiful women and he got to hang out with Andy Cohen!
