A woman who fell onto Red Line tracks with her young son in her arms reached out today to the MBTA to publicly thank the people who helped her and her child, and to let people know it was an accident.
“I do want to make it extremely clear that this event was purely an accidental one,” 37-year-old Meera Thakrar wrote in an e-mail to the MBTA.
A surveillance camera at the Kendall/MIT Station in Cambridge last Wednesday captured Thakrar, while holding her 4-year-old son, booking it toward the T tracks, falling in the pit, and quickly being helped by a bystander.
“He did so without any concern for his own life! So, thank you, Kris, from the bottom of my heart!!” Thakrar wrote referring to the man who helped her child.
According to a T spokesman, Thakrar, an Attleboro woman, told an MBTA Red Line inspector after the incident that she had seen a train “berthed on the northbound platform and believed she could board it (from the south bound side).”
Video shows her jetting to catch the train on the other side of the pit, and abruptly landing on the tracks with her son in her arms. The pair did not suffer visible injuries, however they were taken to the hospital for evaluation.
In her letter to the MBTA, Thakrar also thanked other bystanders who helped pull her from the pit, as well as MBTA officials.
“I commend this group of people in having the presence of mind, and for not all or more of them jumping onto the tracks to help us, since this would have actually further complicated the situation and everybody would have had to get back onto the platform again,” she wrote.
“Further, I would like to thank the MBTA and its attendant Staff in the quick response that they provided in terms of getting the Paramedics to the site that evening so that the appropriate medical attention could be provided to me and my son, and then the subsequent transport to the Mass. General Hospital for further medical care.”
The incident occurs around the 30-second mark.
