The Good Samaritan who risked his own life to save a drunk filmmaker from an oncoming train at a Staten Island railroad in January has died from his injuries. Steven Santiago, 39, spotted independent filmmaker Jonathan Parisen on the tracks at New Dorp around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 8. Santiago was able to help Parisen get up to the platform, but he was hit by a train in the head. Parisen tweeted yesterday, "I was just informed that Steven Santiago passed away today. My prayers go out to Steven and his family. God bless."
According to witnesses, Parisen was drunk at the time, and there are conflicting accounts about how he got down there in the first place—he had either gone down to retrieve a fallen shoe, or he took a drunken dive onto the tracks as a lark. Parisen suffered two broken ribs and a spine injury; he was eventually charged with criminal trespass, a misdemeanor.
Santiago, whom family members say was trying to turn his life around after a drug-related prison stint, suffered a serious head injury. Sources told the Post that over the past several weeks, Santiago had recovered enough to move from the hospital to a long-term rehab. But he took a turn for the worse on Friday, and was rushed back to the hospital's emergency room—he died Saturday just before 4 a.m.
"I consider him a hero, like anybody who was in 9/11, everybody who was overseas fighting this war. He's a hero in my eyes," Santiago's older brother, Edwin, told reporters last month.
