The 15-year-old girl who was pushed in Corona onto the tracks of an approaching 7 train said she was “lucky” to have survived.
Xinyi Huang told the Daily News about her experience. She was standing at the 103 Street-Corona Plaza station on March 5 when 38-year-old George Pautt pushed her. Huang managed to position herself against the trackbed wall as the train approached.
“It just didn’t seem realistic,” Huang said. “I was just standing there waiting for the train to go to Manhattan [and] he pushed me from behind. I’m still not sure what happened. I’m not brave … I was just lucky.”
Officers from the 115th Precinct and EMS units responded to the scene shortly after 8:29 p.m. Huang was transported to Elmhurst Hospital and treated for minor injuries.
“I saw the train coming and I don’t know how I got to the wall,” Huang told the Daily News. “It wasn’t real. I wasn’t thinking of anything. … I just reacted.”
The train’s conductor saw the girl on the tracks and pushed the emergency break, police said.
Police arrested Pautt on March 10 and charged him with second-degree attempted murder. According to the Daily News, Pautt is mentally ill. Prosecutors told the paper that two eyewitnesses were able to identify him as the pusher.
“He should be punished,” Huang said. “There might be other people who this might happen to.”
