Lake-safety knowledge aids Debevoise partner in subway rescue
Debevoise & Plimpton partner Eric Dinallo says he used his knowledge of how to pull someone from a frozen lake to rescue a man last week from the path of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan.
Dinallo, former superintendent of New York’s Insurance Department, says in an email to colleagues he was in the right place at the right time and did what any other person would have done, the Am Law Daily (sub. req.) reports.
Dinallo had been taught by his “weekend house community” to lay face down on the ice when pulling someone out of a frozen lake. So he laid face down perpendicular to the subway platform edge, grabbed the man by his elbows and pulled him to safety.
Dinallo told law firm colleagues about the rescue in an email on Tuesday after word of his good deed began to spread.
Right after Dinallo pulled the man to the subway platform, the train “came screeching by and stopped about 40 feet past us,” Dinallo wrote. The man appeared to be “a bit out of it and down on his luck.” He said he was fine and jumped on the next subway train.
“Frankly, during the whole experience I think adrenaline was pumping and I did not realize how dangerous it all probably seemed until bystanders” expressed concern, Dinallo said in the email. He made a similar statement in an interview with the Am Law Daily.
“It was much more frightening on reflection and after the fact than when it was happening,” he said.
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