Ballet Dancer Jumps Onto Subway Tracks, Rescues Man, Becomes NYC Hero

His mother recounted the "disturbing" scene and "brave" rescue on Facebook.
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Subway heroes come in all types: Army veterans, utility engineers, professional ballet dancers.

The latest transportation savior is more likely to be seen in tights and dance slippers, leaping across a stage at New York City’s prestigious Lincoln Center, than performing a random feat of heroism in his city’s subway system.

Nonetheless, American Ballet Theater dancer Gray Davis did just that: Over the weekend, he came to the rescue of a 58-year-old man who’d fallen onto the tracks at the 72nd Street Broadway-Seventh Avenue station.

According to police, the incident occurred just before midnight on Saturday. The injured man, whose name has not been released, was allegedly pushed onto the tracks by a woman who initially fled the scene. (Carolyn Mack, 23, has since been arrested on assault charges, though she claims she did not push the anonymous man.)

Davis, who’d been waiting at the subway station with his wife, ABT soloist Cassie Trenary, and his mother, Janie Krabbe B. LeTourneau, saw the man fall. “At first I waited for somebody else to jump down there,” he told The New York Times. “People were screaming to get help. But nobody jumped down. So I jumped down.”

Not only did he jump down, but he reportedly lifted the unconscious man to safety, and, upon hearing an oncoming train, “swung” his way out of danger.

“I never realized how high it was,” Davis said of the subway platform ledge. “Luckily, I’m a ballet dancer, so I swung my leg up.”

Davis and Trenary were in the process of heading back from one of her Lincoln Center performances. Although Davis, who’s been with ABT for around 10 years, was not dancing that night due to a herniated disk, Trenary had danced in both the Saturday matinee and evening performances of “The Golden Cockerel.”

Davis’ mother recounted the sequence of events on Facebook in a post shared by ABT’s page, calling the altercation “the most disturbing thing I have ever witnessed”:

As we watched a man and woman on the opposite platform punching each other, Cassandra Trenary made Gray go look for security..all of a sudden the woman threw the man onto the train tracks, while a train was due any minute. We were all horrified about what was about to happen as the man lay unresponsive on that track...out of no where and just in time we all watched as a brave young man jumped down, and lifted the man high up on to safety like he was a feather. Shocked, I said, uh, Cassie is THAT Grayson Davis ? She said Yes it is. He then lifted himself up miraculously just before the train got there. People started cheering and yelling “you are a hero”. The three of us have been in shock ever since. The NYPD came, arrested the lady, then got our statement, and told Gray he did a very brave thing and no doubt saved the man’s life...the man was rushed to hospital and we pray he will be ok. My son has always made me proud, but I’ve never been as proud of him as I was tonight, out of 2 full platforms of people, he was the only person brave enough to jump down and save that man’s life. This certainly is a day I will never forget in more ways than one. (Did I mention Gray has been recovering from a herniated disc for the last month?)

According to several reports, the couple usually uses the 66th Street station after performances, but due to service disruptions, had opted to trek to 72nd instead.

As ABT noted, unlikely heroes truly are everywhere.

HuffPost has reached out to American Ballet Theater and Cassie Trenary for comment and will update this story accordingly.

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