A Toronto man says he owes his life to a Good Samaritan who came to his aide after he fell down a flight of stairs at a downtown subway station.
“If he wasn’t there I don’t know that I would have lived through what happened because I was bleeding a lot and he immediately put pressure and he immediately calmed me down,” Yves Allard told Global News Tuesday.
“If I was left to my own devices I could have bled out, I could have passed out, I could have gone unconscious, so he really — he saved my life.”
Allard said he was trying to get downtown Saturday afternoon and while going down the stairs to the subway platform at Bathurst station, he lost his footing, fell and rolled down about 15 steps. He sustained a serious head injury and required eight staples.
“I remember I was at the bottom of the stairs and all my extremities were numb and I was tingling,” Allard said.
“I just remember screaming like, ‘What happened? What happened? What happened? Am I OK? Am I OK?’ And then immediately a gentleman came out and like put his hand on me and said, ‘You’re bleeding. You need to lie down. It’s going to be OK.’”
WATCH: Toronto man searches for Good Samaritan who saved his life after brutal fall. Lama Nicolas reports.
He said the man put his hand behind Allard’s neck, talked with him to keep him calm and kept checking to make sure he was conscious. He said TTC staff came down and put gauze behind his head before paramedics came.
“That’s why I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go back to that station because it was a little bit tough to see.”
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After Saturday’s incident, Allard turned to the popular online trading zone Bunz in an effort to find the man who came to his aide. He didn’t get the man’s name and only remembers that it started with a V and the man was wearing a red V-neck shirt and had brown hair. Allard called the Good Samaritan “selfless” and wants to personally say thanks.
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“I think we would all expect anyone to do that, but sometimes I think it takes a lot of courage and a lot of tenacity of the human spirit to pause your life and think about the life of somebody else,” he said.
“I don’t know if he knows how important what he did was but it really did save me and I really want to thank him that I’m alive and talking to you guys.”
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TTC spokesman Stuart Green told Global News the transit agency became aware of the incident through social media.
With files from Adam Miller and Lama Nicolas
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