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MTA bus driver saves 5 year old girl who got lost looking for a pet store to replace fish that died

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Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC
Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC after she had gone looking for a pet store to buy a new fish.
Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC
Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC after she had gone looking for a pet store to buy a new fish.

Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves 5 year old girl walking alone in streets of NYC after she had left school earlier that morning to find a pet store to buy a new fish after her fish had recently died. How a city worker’s ‘fatherly’ instincts kicked in and helped re-unite a lost child with her family. 

A veteran MTA bus driver has been hailed a hero after re-uniting a 5 year old girl with her family after she had run away from school only to then find herself lost along the streets of NYC.

Luis Jimenez, 60, said he knew ‘something wasn’t right’ after he noticed the little girl on an Upper West Side sidewalk during his morning shift on the crosstown M116 last month.

As he observed the young girl darting along West 106 st and Broadway, seemingly trying to make her way along the bustling streets of Manhattan all alone, Jimenez instinctively understood something wasn’t adding up.

NYC is not always the city that doesn’t care

‘My instinct as a father came on because if I see a kid in the street in need of help, I would want somebody to help one of my children or one of my grandkids,’ Jimenez told ABC 7NY.

‘You know, my wife always, you know, kind of like she’s worried about me because she knows that when I see something, it’s like we have a saying in the MTA, ‘if you see something, say something.’

‘Oh, well, with me, I will do something,’ he told the outlet.

Jimenez said he kept an eye on the girl for about a block before telling one of his passengers to call 911.

Surveillance footage from the bus shows concerned passengers looking out the window as the young girl wandered alone on the nearby sidewalk.

Jimenez then pulled the bus over and with the help of his passengers, got the little girl to board while they waited for police to arrive.

Authorities said the child had left her school and made it 10 blocks away. The school had reported her missing.

Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC
Luis Jimenez, MTA bus driver saves lost 5 year old girl walking alone along streets of NYC.

A child’s innocence

When police arrived they were able to get the girl reunited with her family.

Authorities said while the girl didn’t have a history of running away, her pet fish had just died and she had left school that day hoping to go to a pet store to get a new one.

Jimenez said he hoped the girl had gotten her new pet, adding, ‘If she didn’t get it we should help out and try to get it for her’

‘Times are hard and there’s things happening every day, and every day we got to come in with a positive attitude and be able to, even though it’s negative all over the world going on, we have to go ahead and make a difference,’ he said.

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