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A Big Apple straphanger hero pulled an 83-year-old Air Force vet to safety with only seconds to spare after both were shoved onto Upper East Side subway tracks, allegedly by an illegal immigrant.
Jhon Pena, 30, ignored his own injuries and helped pull grandfather Richard Williams back onto the platform just moments before a train rolled into the station, an act of heroism that left the older man’s daughters eternally grateful — even though it may not be enough to save her dad’s life.
“He helped my dad get out of there,” Debbie Williams said of Pena. “The first guy that got pushed is the guy who assisted my father off the tracks with everybody else. What can you say about New Yorkers?”
Tragically, she told The Post her dad, who just celebrated his 55th wedding anniversary, may not make it — Queens prosecutors said Wednesday that Williams is “currently brain dead.”
“My father is not doing well at all,” she said. “There is no change — It does not look promising.”
Both men were at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station in Manhattan shortly before noon Sunday when prosecutors said illegal Honduran immigrant Bairon Hernandez, 34, walked up and pushed them onto the tracks in a shocking and unprovoked attack.
Chilling cellphone footage of the attack apparently shot by Pena from the train tracks shows the aftermath of the attack, with the suspect casually strolling along the platform after pushing both men onto the subway bed.
A bystander is seen in the video grabbing the thug and briefly scuffling with him before he turns to check on the two injured straphangers, as the attacker — alleged to be Hernandez — is seen walking away.
The stranger then is seen extending his hand to the two victims.
“It’s terrible, it’s hit him very hard,” Pena’s mother, Claudia Pena, said of her son. “He tells me it was very distressing getting [Williams] out of there and not doing anything more for him.”
Pena suffered shoulder and knee injuries and was taken to Jamaica Hospital.
Williams, a retired Air Force jet mechanic who later founded a bulletproof material business suffered the more serious injuries and remained at the ICU at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell.
Another of the vet’s three daughters, Diane Williams, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, told The Post that the incident has been hardest on her ailing elderly mother.
“I have no idea how she is going to survive this,” she said. “Right now, she is just lost. She is completely lost. She keeps talking to my dad and telling him, ‘C’mon, wake up. Wake up, sweetheart.’
“She can’t digest this.”
She said her father “loved Manhattan,” and spoke to him just before he left his home on Roosevelt Island to head into the Big Apple, telling her, ‘Honey, I’m going to go now. I’m going into the city.”
The sisters said Richard Williams had beaten prostate cancers just six months ago after being diagnosed about five years earlier, and had found a new lease on life.
“He was out shopping,” Debbie Williams said. “He was out, going on the subway. He’s fully independent. He battled cancer, he got through that…. He was living his best life and then this had to happen.
“I can’t imagine why anybody would consider pushing a person,” she said. “It’s beyond me.”
She praised Pena and the other bystanders who came to her dad’s aid.
“They’re phenomenal,” she added. “Until that son of a bitch that came over here and just decided to start tearing up the subway. There are no words to say how I feel about him.”
Cops picked Hernandez up at a Brooklyn homeless shelter about 5 a.m. Tuesday and charged him with felony assault.
He was arraigned Wednesday evening and ordered held on $100,000 cash bail or a $300,000 bond.
Prosecutors said Hernandez was in the country illegally, with a prior conviction in New Jersey for entering the US illegally, and a Texas conviction for re-entering illegally.
Defense attorney Michael Papson said Hernandez “vehemently denies” the allegations, but Judge Janice Chen said the accused shover posed a “great risk” of fleeing and set bail.
Williams’ daughters he should be held accountable.
“I think he should suffer like the rest of us are suffering,” Diane Williams said. “He just randomly did it, just push people off the f–king subway tracks. I hope he lives with his conscience.
“I want him to live and live with the consequences he did.”
English (US)