A man who was stabbed after protecting a woman with a child on a Chicago Transit Authority bus earlier this week says it was the kindness of strangers that saved his life in return.
“I could’ve lost my life,” Jose Santiago said. “I was just trying to be a hero.”
Santiago was on the Diversey bus Monday afternoon when he says he saw a man harassing a woman with a child over a stroller spot on the crowded bus.
“I seen him kick her stroller, I thought he was going to hit her because he was yelling at her and she had a baby with her,” Santiago said. “So I stood up and said, ‘Just sit here. I’m here to help you. Do you need help? I’m here to protect you.'”
But when Santiago got off the bus at the Western stop a short time later, the man and two women with him followed Santiago.
“I said, ‘Leave me alone’ and he kept saying stuff to me like, ‘What you want to do? What you want to do?’” Santiago said.
That’s when Santiago said the man pulled out a knife and started swinging.
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“I fell to the ground, but then he tried to stab me toward my heart and I pushed his arm and so he got me right here in my shoulder,” Santiago said.
He was left bleeding in the street with a punctured lung, until witnesses came to his aid.
“I want to thank everyone who rushed to help my son,” said Santiago’s mother, Gladys Santiago.
Police identified the man as 23-year-old Gidalthi Rodriguez, who was charged with misdemeanor battery.
“I’m disgusted with what Chicago is doing,” said Santiago’s sister, Elizabeth Ramos. “It should have been attempted murder honestly.”
But for Santiago, thinking of the woman he helped, and the man who helped him, brings him to tears. He hopes to meet them both again someday.
“I don’t remember his name,” Santiago said. “He stood with me and applied pressure to my wound and I thank him for that.”
