Man cleaning subway car hailed as hero after helping stranger who stopped breathing

Vincent Seals, a worker at the Millbrae BART station in California, saved the life of a man by performing CPR while paramedics arrived at the scene.

In an interview that Seals had with ABC7 News, he admitted to being just “at the right place at the right time.” Seals said so because the incident took place at the Dublin-Pleasanton stop, which is not the station he usually works at.

The reason Seals was there was that he picked up an extra shift (that he almost refused, though). He revealed that, while he was cleaning one of the trains, one of his co-workers started screaming “someone’s dead! Someone’s dead!”

By pure instinct, Seals rushed to the first train car and, “when I saw him and I see his eyes in the back of his head I just immediately jumped in there and I had to do something."

FOCUSING ON THE YOUNG MAN

The BART worker placed the 20-year-old man on the floor and started performing CPR. Seals admitted that he was not sure for how long he did it as the unconscious man in front of him was his only concern.

"It was just like I was focused on him at that time. I feel someone touch me and say, 'Do you want me to take over?' I said, 'No, I got him.' For some reason I felt connected to him," Seals said.

DIGGING INTO THE OUTCOME

The person who offered help was a BART officer who arrived with a mask and assisted the man with breathing. When paramedics arrived, the 20-year-old person was conscious. One of the most striking aspects of it is that Seals learned CPR at a previous job as BART stopped offering the course a long time ago.

One of his co-workers started screaming “someone’s dead! Someone’s dead!”

"I was just at the right place at the right time. So, he's the hero for coming back and for fighting. He wanted to live, he wanted to survive," said Seals, who admitted that he’d like to meet the man he saved to let him know that people care and strangers can do the right thing.

SAVING ANOTHER PERSON

Seals is not the only person who has saved a man at a train station. Jonathan Kulig was waiting for the subway in Manhattan when he saw a man lying across the rails. Without hesitation, Kulig scooped up the stranger and placed him on the platform 67 minutes before the train passed.

Thankfully, Kulig took a rail safety training only one month before that incident, which helped him know how to avoid both of the electrified third rails in his way to save the stranger.