Christopher Bryant Aboyte helped save Mark Jenkins from being struck by a train, Pacoima, California, January 9, 2022. Jenkins, 71, was inside a single-engine, fixed wing airplane that crash-landed at a railroad crossing. Aboyte, 28, one of several police officers who responded to the scene, went to the cockpit to monitor Jenkins’s condition and keep watch over a fuel leak from one of the plane’s wings. Shortly, a crossing gate descended and a five-car, 600-ton commuter train traveling at least 72 m.p.h. was approaching the crossing from a point about 3,500 feet away. Two of several other officers on-scene joined Aboyte at the plane and when one of them couldn’t open what remained of the mangled cockpit door, all three reached into the plane and hoisted Jenkins over the dashboard and through the broken-out windshield area. Aboyte and the other two had dragged Jenkins about 15 feet from the plane by the time the train struck it four seconds later. Jenkins was not injured in the rescue and recovered from crash-related injuries. Aboyte and the other officers were not injured.
