A veteran MTA bus driver is being called a hero for taking action when he saw a 5-year-old girl wandering the streets of Manhattan all alone.
Luis Jimenez, 60, said he knew something wasn’t right took over after he noticed the little girl on an Upper West Side sidewalk during his morning shift on the crosstown M116 last month.
“My instinct as a father came on because if I see a kid in the street in need of help, I would want somebody to help one of my children or one of my grandkids,” Jimenez told ABC 7 New York.
Jimenez had considered calling out sick that day and was thankful he didn’t when he spotted the little girl darting from the sidewalk into the street alone near W. 106 Street and Broadway.
“You know, my wife always, you know, kind of like she’s worried about me because she knows that when I see something, it’s like we have a saying in the MTA, ‘if you see something, say something.’
“Oh, well, with me, I will do something,” he told the outlet.
Jimenez said he kept an eye on the girl for about a block before telling one of his passengers to call 911.
Surveillance footage from the bus obtained by ABC shows the concerned passengers all peering out of the window as the girl wanders along on the nearby sidewalk.
Jimenez then pulled the bus over and with the help of his passengers, got the little girl to board while they waited for police to arrive.
Other footage showed the little girl quickly walking alone on the sidewalk before getting helped up onto the bus by an adult.
Authorities said the girl had slipped out of school and made it 10 blocks away. The school had reported her missing.
When police arrived they were able to get the girl reunited with her family.
According to authorities, the girl didn’t have a history of running away from school, but her pet fish had just died and she had left that day hoping to go to a pet store to get a new one.
Jimenez said he hoped the girl had gotten her new pet, adding, “If she didn’t get it we should help out and try to get it for her.”
“Times are hard and there’s things happening every day, and every day we got to come in with a positive attitude and be able to, even though it’s negative all over the world going on, we have to go ahead and make a difference,” he said.
