A bus driver in Buffalo saved an allegedly troubled woman from a guardrail along the Scajaquada Expressway on Friday, CBS News reported.
Darnell Barton noticed the woman as he was driving along his usual route and quickly realized she was on the wrong side of the guardrail.
"It didn't seem real because what was going on around, traffic and pedestrians were going by as normal," Barton said.
Despite his full load of passengers, Barton stopped the bus in the middle of the bridge and yelled out to the woman, "Ma'am, are you okay?" and received no response. He then dialed an emergency call and got out of the bus.
When he approached her on the bridge, she still showed no reaction until Barton reached his arm out, eventually pulling her off of the guardrail entirely.
"She was distraught, she was distant, she was really disconnected," Barton said. "I grabbed her arm and put my arm around her and said 'Do you want to come on this side of the guardrail?', and that was actually the first time she spoke to me she said yes."
The woman finally spoke to him as he sat with her until a corrections officer and counselor arrived.
"It was meant to be," Barton said. "I was supposed to be there for her at that moment and I was. I wanted to convey that whatever it was, I'm going to help you through and it's not as serious as jumping onto the 198."
Barton claims any of his co-workers would have done the same.
Once he got back on the bus, his passengers welcomed him with a round of applause.
"I feel like I did what I was supposed to do at the time," Barton said. "I'm a football guy so when you sit the bench and the coach calls your number, you gotta go in there make a play, do what the play calls for, and I think that's what I did."
