A regular commute home to the western suburbs turned into a near-deadly trip for a man and two teens he didn't even know.
As Jeff Pohl got off the train and walked across the tracks, two high school girls were in trouble and they weren't even aware.
Pohl says it was just another day. He was just getting home from work around 4 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, when a chance encounter and his fatherly instincts kicked in.
Pohl had just gotten off the Metra train at the Western Springs stop.
He says the train configurations put him and the other passengers, many who were Fenwick High School students, on the other side of the gates from where they needed to go to get home.
He was walking behind four girls as they started crossing the tracks. But he says two of them didn't notice the eastbound train coming right at them.
Pohl says the girls were wearing ear pods and probably didn't hear the train's horns or his screams. He ran toward them and got their attention just at the last moment and pulled them back from the oncoming train.
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Pohl says the two girls were shocked and shaken, but otherwise fine.
Meantime, his 11-year-old son is calling him a hero. But Pohl says he just did what anyone else in that situation would have done.
