Oct. 13 (UPI) — A New York City MTA bus driver is being heralded as a hero after he saw a little girl walking the streets of Manhattan’s Upper West Side by herself and stopped his bus to investigate.
Luis Jimenez, 60, a veteran of the MTA, said he suspected something wasn’t right when he saw the 5-year-old girl darting from the sidewalk into the street by herself near W. 106 Street and Broadway last month.
The girl skipped school that day to go to the pet store after her fish died, officials later said. Her school, about 10 blocks away, had reported her missing.
“My instinct as a father came on because if I see a kid in the street in need of help, I would want somebody to help one of my children or one of my grandkids,” Jimenez told ABC 7 New York.
“You know, my wife always, you know, kind of like she’s worried about me because she knows that when I see something, it’s like we have a saying in the MTA, ‘if you see something, say something.’
“Oh, well, with me, I will do something,” he continued.
Jimenez said he watched the girl for about a block before asking one of his passengers to call 911 and then pulled the bus over and with the help of others onboard, bought the girl about the bus while they waited for the police to arrive.
Jimenez said he had been considering calling out of work sick that day, but is glad he didn’t.
Police reunited the girl with her family.
The girl didn’t have a history of running away from school, but the death of her pet fish prompted her to skip class and go to the pet store for a new one, officials said.
“If she didn’t get it we should help out and try to get it for her,” Jimenez said of the girl’s quest for a new pet fish.
“Times are hard and there’s things happening every day, and every day we got to come in with a positive attitude and be able to, even though it’s negative all over the world going on, we have to go ahead and make a difference.”
