LIRR engineer lauded for saving man's life

When LIRR engineer Tom Riley's equipment train passed the narrow steel bridge late one December night, what he saw made him do a double take.

"There was a man lying almost under the tracks on the little walkway," said Riley, 46, of Kings Park. His duties required only that he report a trespasser on the Port Jefferson branch's right of way, but the 18-year locomotive engineer's intuition told him to do more.

"I just didn't feel right about it," he said. "So I stopped the train."

Riley got out of the empty train and walked several hundred feet along the dark, snowy tracks. Nearing the small bridge, he came upon a startling sight -- a man standing on the span's ledge with a rope looped around his neck. The rope's other end was tied to the bridge.

"I heard him tell me, 'You take another step, and I'm jumping!' " said Riley, who also has worked as a police officer in New York City and in Florida.

LIRR and MTA police officials have asked that some details of the incident not be disclosed to protect the privacy of the person involved.

It was the eve of a winter holiday last year. The man was depressed and spoke of "problems in his life," said Riley, a father of two. For more than a half-hour, Riley consoled and comforted the man, and even told him some jokes.

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"I just talked to him about life and kids, how fathers are their kids' idols and how he wouldn't ever be able to hold his grandkids," Riley said.

LIRR president Helena Williams called Riley's actions "just a magnificent job of humanity."

"That takes a lot from somebody who is not a trained professional in mental health therapy -- to be able to connect with another human being, and save him," said Williams, who called Riley to commend him.Riley persuaded the man to give him the phone number of a relative, who arrived and helped Riley talk the man away from the ledge. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation and treatment, Riley said.

Riley's actions were a testament to LIRR engineers being a "caring class of people," said Mickey Quinn, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Local 269.

"He doesn't realize how extraordinary that was, because he risked his own life to save someone else's," Quinn said.

Riley doesn't see it that way: "Honestly, I didn't do anything special. I just talked to him."