TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about suicide, which may be triggering to some.
One Monday morning, as commuters in New York City busily rushed off to work, a suicidal father reportedly stepped in front of an oncoming train in the Bronx with his 5-year-old.
To the shock and horror of dozens of onlookers, at about 8 a.m., Fernando Balbuena, 45, scooped up his daughter, Ferni, and leaped in front of a train at the Knightsbridge Road subway station, according to the New York Post. Although Balbuena died at the scene, the little girl miraculously survived.
Balbuena reportedly called his wife, Niurka Caraballo, shortly after leaving the couple's apartment with Ferni.
A family friend later told the NY Post that Caraballo struggled to make out what her husband was saying, but in her heart, she knew that something was seriously wrong.
As soon as the phone call ended, she took off running for the Knightsbridge station, which sits less than a half-mile from the couple's apartment in the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx, not far from Yankee Stadium.
By the time she'd reached the tracks, the frantic mother was too late: Her husband had already jumped in front of the train and was dead.
"When the train was approaching, oh my God, he took that girl and he jumped,” Leidy Martinez told The New York Times.
Balbuena reportedly died on impact, but the couple's daughter Ferni, whose fall might have been protected by her father's body, was remarkably unscathed.
In emotional footage captured on a bystander's cellphone, the 5-year-old can be seen crawling out from under the stopped train — her only visible injury a small trickle of blood running down her forehead.
"I'm a mom and this devastated me like crazy," one witness told WPIX. "I'm absolutely just so thankful that she's all right."
Amazingly, good Samaritans rushed to her aid, and hoisted the little girl off the subway tracks to safety. “The only thing she was saying was ‘Papa, my papa,’” witness Antonio Love, who jumped down to help, told the New York Times.
And thank goodness he did. "I never think about anything," Jairo Torres told CBS New York. "I just care about saving the life of the baby."
The little girl was soon reunited with her mother and treated at Jacobi Medical Center, but released shortly after.
“She got lucky,” a source from the police department told the NY Post. “It’s amazing that she’s alive.”
Caraballo later shared that although she knew her husband was suffering from depression, she never suspected he might be suicidal.
She certainly never anticipated he'd have attempted to end his life — and their daughter's — so violently.
Speaking through a translator, the grieving wife said, “He was a good husband, a good father, a good provider, and a good man. I had no idea.”
Torres said he was standing on the platform when he saw Balbuena jump onto the tracks with his daughter — while he was still talking on his cellphone, presumably to his wife. Most bystanders watched in stunned horror as the pair disappeared under the train and the conductor hit the brakes. But Torres is said to have heroically jumped onto the tracks.
He could instantly see that the father had died, but the little girl? She was moving. And soon, he was instructing her to crawl forward to safety.
"She says 'What happened to my daddy?'" he said, according to CBS News. "I said, 'Don't look at your daddy. Come to me. Crawl like a puppy.'"
Caraballo, who was able to take her daughter home from the hospital Monday evening, praised the actions of the heroic bystanders such as Torres.
"My little girl is in perfect condition thanks to God and the angels that protected her," she said. "Those living angels with my little girl. Thank you, thank you."
Note: If you or any of your loved ones are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can always reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling 988. They are available 24/7 by phone or online chat.
