NORWALK–A police officer made a heroic save on Thursday when traffic could have caused a deadly train crash.
At 12:24 p.m. Norwalk Police Officer Neil Robertson was driving on Route 1, which had a lot of traffic due to an accident that had shut down I-95. People were trying to avoid the shut-down highway, but it created bumper-to-bumper traffic on side roads.
“I could see that the bumper and the track were right on top of each other and the horn is blaring on that train, I hear it coming,” said Officer Robertson.
While at a red light on Cross Street at the intersection with Wilton Avenue, Robertson saw the train gates begin to go down, and noticed that an SUV was stopped in the way of the gates with no where to go due to the traffic. Robertson quickly got the vehicles in front of the SUV to all move up to give the SUV enough space to clear the tracks.
“All the cars moved forward at the same time, and the SUV, just gunned it right off the tracks just as the train came right through,” said the four year veteran.
The SUV made it to safety just seconds before the train rolled through, as seen in the below video captured of the incident.
A witness sent the following email to Norwalk Police Chief Tom Kulhawik about the heroic save:
One of your officers deserves praise as he saved a lady from being hit by a train. The woman in a blue SUV stopped on top of the tracks in front of the Cablevision building due to heavy traffic ahead. Very shortly after her halt on the tracks, the lights and bells starting going off and the gate comes down for the approaching train. Lucky for her, one of your officers saw this unfolding and quickly jumped out of his car and ran to the cars in front of the woman to have them move up. He managed to save the day with about 2 seconds to spare.
