A NY Waterway ferry crew rescued a man who police say stole a New York City taxi, drove it to the Hudson River and jumped in Friday morning.
Capt. Dave Dort and his crew were on the 79’x28.5’x8.5’ Thomas H. Kean passenger ferry around 8:30 a.m. when they saw the man jump from a seawall just north of the Brookfield Place/Battery Park City Ferry Terminal in Manhattan, according to an account released by NY Waterway.
Dort brought the ferry toward the man as deckhands Gregorio Pages and Pietro Romano readied a Jason’s Cradle, a roll-up ladder dropped from the bow for water rescues.
In a video of the rescue, the crew shouted encouragement to the man as they approached, got him to hold the ladder, and pulled him aboard. The Kean proceeded to the ferry terminal, where the crew handed the man off to police and a city Emergency Medical Service ambulance crew.
Police did not identify the 58-year-old man, who was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
It was the second rescue in the last two years for Dort, who in July 2016 spotted a man in the river near the Midtown ferry terminal at West 39th Street, and supervised that rescue.
Pages was also involved in that rescue, as he was during the famed “miracle on the Hudson,” when NY Waterway mariners rescued 143 passengers and crew after US Airways Flight 1549 was ditched in the Hudson on Jan. 15, 2009. In 31 years of operation NY Waterway crews have saved more than 250 people, according to company officials.
“The crew did an excellent job. They did what they were trained to do,” said Dort. “For us, this is all in a day’s work.”
