Darnell “Big Country” Barton has been driving a Metro bus in the Buffalo, New York area for 3 years now and he’s seen and met all kinds of people. But it was a recent run-in with an unnamed lady who was teetering over the edge of a bridge on the Scajaquada Expressway, and the surveillance video that has since been released of the interaction, that will be one he’ll never forget and has people rightfully calling Mr. Barton a hero.
For Barton it was just another Friday afternoon as he was headed towards Buffalo State College with a bus full of area high school students. Barton noticed the woman on the narrow ledge and pulled his bus over to a stop.
“It didn’t seem real because what was going on around, traffic and pedestrians were going by as normal,” Barton said of the sight of the woman. As the following video shows, Barton got up from his driver’s seat, opened the doors to his bus and cautiously asked, “Ma’am are you okay?”
Darnell told WIVB:
“She was distraught, she was distant, she was really disconnected. I grabbed her arm and put my arm around her and said ‘Do you want to come on this side of the guardrail,’ and that was actually the first time she spoke to me she said, ‘yes.’ It was meant to be. I was supposed to be there for her at that moment and I was. I wanted to convey that whatever it was, I’m going to help you through and it’s not as serious as jumping onto the 198.”
Barton lifted the woman from the outside of the railing and to the sidewalk. He then sat down next to her for a few minutes until a counselor and a corrections officer who happened to be on the scene offered to take over. Known to his co-workers as “Big Country,” the humble Barton added:
“I feel like I did what I was supposed to do at the time. I’m a football guy so when you sit the bench and the coach calls your number, you gotta go in there make a play, do what the play calls for, and I think that’s what I did.”
When Darnell got back on the bus after the ordeal was over, the students on board gave him a rousing round of applause.
We’d like to join those students Mr. Barton, and since you’re a self-described football guy we say to you, “Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t Lose!”
Photo: Buffalo News / WIVB
