Chiquita Martin and Marcella Lockett were driving on Lake Street on Tuesday night in Garfield Park when Martin spotted two feet dangling from the Green Line tracks above.
At first, she couldn’t believe her eyes, and they almost drove on.
Fortunately, they did stop, and after hopping out of their pickup truck they heard a woman screaming for help.
“We saw her slipping from the wire,” Martin told the Sun-Times. “So [Lockett] pulled his truck up and told her to jump in the back and she just let go.”
The woman, 35, told Martin she jumped from the train in the 3100 block of West Lake Street because she missed her stop.
“I said, ‘Well, you could have got off at the next stop,” Martin told the Sun-Times.
Lockett called 911, but saw the woman’s hands were slipping, and he worried that crews wouldn’t arrive quickly enough.
At first, Lockett told the woman to jump into his arms, but Martin feared that would injure both of them.
The woman fell 15 to 20 feet into the bed of the truck, breaking her leg, but she remained responsive until an ambulance arrived, Martin said.
The woman on the tracks told police that she’d been on a Green Line train heading into the city and had missed her stop. She pulled the manual door release and fell onto the tracks, according to a police report.
She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was listed in good condition.
Firefighters were able to retrieve her cellphone from the tracks, but her bag remained trapped in a bundle of electrical wires.
An employee at a nearby business did not witness her fall but said she takes the Green Line to and from work and often sees people pulling the manual door release.
Riders are not permitted to open rail car doors or evacuate a train unless told to do so by a CTA employee or are in immediate danger, according to CTA’s emergency evacuation instructions. Tracks are electrified, and nearby trains could still be in motion.
It was pure luck that Martin spotted the woman. Martin and Lockett were driving around making deliveries for SkipCart, an on-demand delivery service, when Martin, from the corner of her eye, spotted the legs dangling.
She said the traffic light had just changed at Kedzie and they were about to drive through.
“I said, ‘Babe there’s some kids up there playing on this damn train, I think they’re stuck,” Martin told the Sun-Times. “And he said no there ain’t, no they ain’t. So we were sitting there arguing for like three minutes saying is nobody up, then I was like, ‘You know what, just turn right there.’”
In Martin’s head, she thought it had to be a kid on the tracks because no adult would ever jump onto the tracks.
She could not believe they were able to rescue the woman.
“It was shocking,” Martin said. “I was sitting there shaking.”
