Man Saves Elderly Woman From Certain Death
LODI (CBS13) ”• Police praised a young man who came to the aid of an elderly woman on Saturday night, saying that he saved her from certain death.
20-year old Samuel Huffman pulled 82-year old Marguerite Jones from train tracks at a Lodi crossing mere moments before she would have been struck and killed by an oncoming train.
According to Jones, she was crossing the Union Pacific railroad tracks on Locust Street when her motorized wheelchair tipped over, causing her to fall onto the tracks.
“I knew I couldn’t get up,” she said. “I knew I couldn’t get off the railroad tracks.”
Authorities say Samuel Huffman was driving by when he say Jones lying on the tracks. Seeing an approaching train, he got out of his vehicle and managed to pull her from the tracks just as the train passed.
“It was either sit there and watch her get hit by a train or do something,” Huffman said. “There’s no way I could have just sat there.”
The train passed so close that the engineer believed it had struck them, and stopped the train. A Lodi police lieutenant was nearby and witnessed the near-miss, and authorities said the train missed Samuel and Marguerite by three feet.
Both police and Marguerite say that if Samuel had not acted, she would have been killed. “He saved my life, and I love him for that,” she said.
Jones was evaluated by emergency personnel and was determined to be uninjured. Her wheelchair was utterly destroyed.