The platform where it almost happened
During a ceremony at City Hall, Newark Mayor Cory Booker recognized a security guard whose quick-thinking and decisive action prevented an inebriated amateur from talking to a very attractive woman at the PATH.
Tyrell Procter was on duty at Penn Station in Newark at about 1:15 a.m. last Saturday when he said he noticed Matthew Saltzmann stumbling as he wandered up and down the platform while waiting for the next PATH train to arrive. Saltzmann kept glancing at another waiting rider, a tall blonde with striking blue eyes who was reading Jane Austen, Procter said.
“I’ve seen that move a thousand times before, the I-hope-to-catch-her-attention-by-repeatedly-walking-in-front-of-her move,” Procter said at the event to honor him. “But nobody is ever dumb enough to actually try to talk to the woman! Come on, that’s suicide.”
Apparently not for Saltzmann, a 22-year-old Jersey City resident who is studying to become a podiatrist and who recently was dumped by his first real girlfriend. Police said Saltzmann attended a Devil’s hockey game at the Prudential Center and then spent several hours drinking Miller Lite at the Trax Bar in the train station before heading up to the platform.
“He was a little wobbly and I thought he was just going to keep doing his walk-bys until the train came,” Procter said. “But then, after like the 17th time, he stopped right in front of her and lifted his finger up like he was going to say something. I was like, ‘Oh crap!’ and just reacted.”
The mayor branded Procter a hero and said the security guard, who the previous night had been vomited on by a drunken stock broker, acted with obvious disregard for his own safety. Procter is only about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 145 pounds, while Saltzmann stands at least 6-1 and is 100 pounds heavier.
“Mr. Procter could have stood by and watched. That would have the most prudent, and perhaps entertaining, thing to do,” Booker said. “But he did what few of us would have. He stepped in when the danger to Mr. Saltzmann’s fragile ego was highest.”
Said Procter’s wife: “I found out what happened on the PATH station from my husband. He called me at 2 a.m. to say, ‘Something just happened to me. I saved a man who tried to talk with a woman who was out of his league.’ I was not surprised. That’s the type of man he is.”
Booker also presented Procter with a key to the city, which Procter used later that night to get into the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and have a party with his friends.
