5 days ago
Samuel L. Jackson reveals he was almost killed in horror subway accident
Samuel L. Jackson has revealed how he almost died after being 'dragged by a subway train in New York' nearly four decades ago.
The 76-year-old Pulp Fiction actor had been helping a woman who had dropped something when the car door slammed shut on his ankle, causing him to be hauled along the platform at speed.
Recalling the terrifying accident, which happened in December 1988, Jackson said he truly believed that he was going to be killed.
'I got dragged by a subway train in New York… I got dragged by the A train,' Jackson said.
'Fortunately, I was in the middle door of the last car, and it was a long-a** train station.
'And when the door closed on my foot, [the] train took off. So, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm like, "Oh, f***, I'm going to die."'
Speaking on Monday's episode of Paloma Faith's Mad Sad Bad podcast, he continued: 'I could see the tunnel coming and I couldn't figure out anything that I could grab or hold on to and get close to the train so I wouldn't get killed in the tunnel.'
Luckily, the train 'just slowed down really, really slow' until it stopped entirely.
While he didn't lose his life, Jackson didn't come out completely unscathed and ended up spending 10 months on crutches and over a year having physical therapy due to a torn ACL and meniscus.
He won $540,000 in damages after he sued the New York Transit Authority.
Jackson said that everyone in the subway carriage had tried desperately to save his life that day.
'The guy who pulled the emergency cord was on crutches,' he continued in the podcast episode.
'Everybody else in there was trying to open the door, get my foot out the door, push and push and pull and try and take my shoe off.
'And he was going to the emergency cord and he finally pulled it and stopped it.'
And, as he was being dragged down the platform, all Jackson could think was that 'it was going to be a really sad Christmas, because it was like a few days before Christmas.'
'Things slow down when you're looking at death,' he added.
'I've been in car accidents and if I see them, it's almost like everything is slowing down and you know there's nothing you can do to get out of the way.'
According to the New York Post, the New York state's public transit is the most dangerous in the country.
They report that there were 23 deaths, 1,641 violent incidents and 1,759 injuries between 2021 and 2023.
Jackson's nightmarish brush with death occurred just months after he finished filming for Spike Lee's award-winning film, Do the Right Thing, which was released in 1989.
He would famously go on to star in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction seven years later.
