Sitting in the ticket collection booth at Dufferin station last Friday, Russell Cormier was chatting with his partner when he heard a rumbling screech from the tunnel below.
“Then, all of a sudden, we heard screaming,” Cormier said yesterday. “People started running upstairs. They were yelling, ‘Kids. He pushed the kids.’”
By this time, Cormier was out of the booth trying to make sense of what was going on. That’s when he saw a man bounding up the escalator.
“Someone yelled, ‘That’s him. That’s him.’”
Cormier lunged at him as the suspect dashed for the exit turnstiles. By this time, Cormier’s partner, Joe De Gabrielis, had jumped into the fray. The suspect wrestled away from Cormier, then swung at De Gabrielis. The suspect bounded outside and began sprinting down the street with Cormier at his heels.
At this point, Cormier began questioning whether he should be chasing him at all. Cormier, 47, is a large man and suffered a heart attack a year and a half ago.
“But I just thought of those kids and my own kids and I couldn’t let this guy get away,” he said.
Just as the suspect was about to slip inside a restaurant, Cormier pounced on him, sending the man to the concrete below.
Adenir DeOliveira, the man charged in Friday’s incident, is scheduled to appear in Old City Hall court this morning.
