Tim McGinty, wearing a cowboy hat and a bandage around his arm, said he tried to pull Jennifer Riordan inside the plane himself.
When a woman was sucked out of her window on Southwest Flight 1380, a man wearing a cowboy hat and a firefighter pulled her back inside the plane.
The flight traveling from New York City to Dallas suffered an engine failure, and a window exploded.
Tim McGinty, wearing a cowboy hat and a bandage around his arm, said he tried to pull Jennifer Riordan inside the plane himself, but couldn’t do it alone. He was originally seated across the aisle, a few seats ahead of the window explosion.
«A guy helped and we got her pulled in and they tried to resuscitate her,» he said.
That guy was firefighter Andrew Needum of Celina, Texas.
Together, the men pulled the mother of two back inside the plane.
«My husband lives his life for others every day, and today was such a strong reminder that life is so precious and that there are good people all around us,» McGinty’s wife Kristin said on Facebook last night.
Needum and a nurse performed CPR on Riordan, passenger Sheri Sears said in a Facebook post following the incident.
Sears said half of Riordan’s body was sucked outside the window before McGinty and Needum pulled her back in.
They weren’t able to revive Riordan, who died from her injuries.
The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
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