Borough President Vito Fossella Commends Anthony Moran For Life-Saving Heroics On Staten Island Expressway

Borough President Vito Fossella welcomed Taxi & Limousine Chief of Operations Anthony Moran into Borough Hall yesterday to commend him on his quick-thinking and heroic actions which saved the life of a motorist in distress on the Staten Island Expressway on June 22.

Using his training and intuition as a former probation officer, along with the help of bystander, Mr. Moran immediately jumped into high gear by grabbing a hammer from his car, smashing the rear window, pulling the driver from his SUV and immediately administering CPR. Without a moment’s hesitation for his own safety, he averted what could have been a tragedy.

In the days of a 24/7 news cycle and viral social media posts, Borough President Vito Fossella said bystanders will often choose to use their cellphones to record incidents, whether good or bad, rather than stepping in to help.

Then, there are people like Mr. Moran.

“You always hope there is a knight in shining armor, somebody who will jump into action to save a life and do something heroic,” said Borough President Fossella. “There are a lot of options you can take when you see something like that, but this man did what we hope everybody would do if our loved one was in that type of accident. So, we wanted to call attention to it and highlight it in a world of bad news that we have heroes among us, there are people who do the right thing. On behalf of half-million people on Staten Island, we want to say that we appreciate what you did and we respect you for it.”

Mr. Moran described his actions with humility. He was flagged down by a woman on the Staten Island Expressway, near Bradley Avenue, who told him there was a man unresponsive in a car up ahead. With the car still in drive, Anthony broke the window, put it in park, pulled him out and began chest compressions.

“Within two to three minutes of starting CPR, he started to cough and to sit up,” said Mr. Moran. “We told him to hang in there.”

Later that night, Mr. Moran received a call from the driver’s father saying his son was recovering and thanked him for saving his son’s life.

The driver recounted that he was allergic to dairy and grabbed a power drink at the gym that he didn’t realize contained dairy as an ingredient. He remembers blacking out and waking up in the hospital. It was in the hospital that he learned about how his life was saved.

​“I can’t believe someone actually did this for me and they don’t even know me,” he said. “Humanity is amazing. I can’t even express how grateful I am to you just for being there in the right time and the right place and stopping what you had to do that day. We all live a busy life, but what you did for me that day really means a lot and I hope whoever sees this can still have faith in humanity and understand that there are people out there like you.”