Good NewsUnemployed man misses job interview to save baby from Brooklyn subway tracks, gets job offers
Delroy Simmonds, a 30-year-old unemployed father of two, was on his way to a job interview on Monday when a gust of wind blew a baby stroller onto the subway tracks in Brooklyn. A crying baby was inside.
Without hesitation, Simmonds jumped onto the tracks to save bleeding nine-month-old David Zamara just before the train arrived.
"I jumped down and I snatched the baby up," Simmonds told NY Daily News. "The train was coming around the corner as I lifted the baby from the tracks. I really wasn't thinking."
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His heroic deed caused him to miss his interview.
On Wednesday, Simmonds was reunited with the baby he saved — right after accepting a new full-time job offer with a janitorial company.
"That's the little man that got me a job today," Delroy Simmonds said during a reunion with little Zamara and his mother, Maria, at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center where the child was treated for minor injuries.
"It feels amazing. Just seeing him alive."
When Simmonds' story made headlines, job offers started pouring in. Simmonds had been looking for a job since he was laid off as a vocational worker for the mentally challenged more than a year ago.
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Guy Rordriguez, project manager for ABM Janitorial Services, said hiring Simmonds was a "no-brainer."
"It says a lot about his character that he would jump on the tracks to save a little boy," he told NY Daily News. "We are happy to hire Delroy. We are honoured."
Simmonds is also honoured.
"All of this happened so fast, I feel like crying," Simmonds told the New York Post. "The Lord blessed me. Of all the bad things that have happened to me — something good had to happen. I saved a child and I got a job. I was worried about getting a job, now I'm like, 'Wow.'"
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Simmonds dismisses his new hero status, claiming that "anybody in that situation should have done what" he did.
"It was the fatherly instinct. I have two daughters of my own — eight and five. I was being a father. I would have done it for any baby," Simmonds said.
