Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday honored one of New York’s Bravest, who saved a Brooklyn public school principal from nearly drowning in her vehicle during the city’s first major flash flood of the year.
Off-duty FDNY first responder Travis Langan, of Crown Heights’ Ladder 123, was recognized for saving the life of Carmen Pinto, who got trapped inside her Tesla Model 3 Wednesday when it malfunctioned from the rising water levels.
“She tried everything. She tried to open her car door. She tried to bring down her windows. She tried calling 911. Nothing was working fast enough,” Mamdani said during an event at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn.
Two inches of rain fell in less than one hour that evening, as Langan drove home from work on the Jackie Robinson Parkway — and noticed six cars “basically submerged” in the flood waters, he said.
Langan, who was on the phone with his dad at the time, immediately hung up and jumped into action to try to lead people to safety.
A bystander then pointed out Pinto, whose face was pressed up against the sunroof of her vehicle as she was rapidly running out of room to breathe.
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“I just started punching my way through. And I got a big enough hole,” Langan recalled.
“She actually handed me this Yeti cup. And I just started wailing away at the sunroof with the Yeti cup,” he said.
“I started ripping the glass. And I’m able to get her head through. And I’m just very grateful that she came out alive.”
The press conference at the fire department’s MetroTech Center headquarters marked the pair’s first reunion since the harrowing experience.
“I am so happy and so blessed that I was sent an angel,” Pinto, the principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Bedford-Stuyvesant, gushed to her savior.
“Travis never thought of himself,” she said. “He could have just driven home to his pregnant wife and his beautiful daughters. But he stopped.”
A diehard New York Knicks fan, Pinto, clad in a Jalen Brunson T-shirt, joked she was grateful to be able to live to see her home team continue playing in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, with the next game set for Saturday.
“He punched a hole in my roof and rescued me. And today I get to see the Knicks yet one more time,” she said.
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“I get to go back to my school community in Bed-Stuy District 16.”
Mamdani praised Langan — who served in the US Marines — for his life of service, and the “split-second choice” that saved Pinto’s life.
“This is a man whose first instinct is to help, to protect, to serve, and to save,” the mayor said.
“On Wednesday night, he made a split-second choice. Because of his bravery, Mrs. Pinto will sit down to dinner with her family this evening.”
