(The following story by Mac Daniel appeared on the Boston Globe website on January 24.)
BOSTON — It was bad enough that a distraught man was threatening to kill himself by touching the 600-volt third rail. Then MBTA Transit Police Officer Danny Vieira saw the headlights of a Red Line train rumbling toward them at about 30 miles per hour.
Seconds earlier, Vieira had called on his radio to order all trains stopped. But word hadn’t reached this one as it entered the Davis Square Station in Somerville at about 7 p.m. Monday.
Recounting the incident, Vieira said last night that he leaned out over the tracks and told the man to come closer to the platform. “And that’s when we saw the headlights. I said, ‘Oh, my God! We’re both going to be hit by a train.’ ”
Vieira grabbed his flashlight and waved it back and forth at the train, the standard signal to stop. But the train didn’t slow right away.
He said what flashed in his mind was a New York City man who this month jumped on the subway tracks, pulled a Massachusetts student between the tracks, and shielded them both as the train rolled over them.
Vieira said he lunged down, grabbed the man’s neck and armpit, and lifted him to safety.
“We were kind of dangling there for a second,” Vieira said. “I think the adrenaline shot in, and I kind of pulled him up. As I was pulling him up, I looked over at the train, and I could see the eyes of the motorman. And he looked just as frightened as I did.”
The train stopped 10 feet away.
The man on the tracks, a 53-year-old Somerville resident who was taken to Somerville Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, “was obviously in some kind of trouble, and I was just glad I was there to help him,” said Vieira, 27, born and raised in Somerville with two years in the job, a 5 1/2-month-old boy at home, and a wife who waits up for him to finish his late-night shift. He spent much of yesterday thinking about how bad things could have been and apologizing to his wife.
Sergeant Richard Campos, Vieira’s superior, later talked to the train operator.
“He just raved about Officer Vieira,” Campos said.
“Had Vieira not signaled, he said he couldn’t see the man in the pit and would have never stopped in time.”