When Sheinelle Jones boarded an Amtrak train from Philadelphia to New York City late at night, she was exhausted. She was so tired, in fact, that she fell asleep … and stayed asleep even after the train reached Manhattan.
“I woke up and there was no one on the train,” she recalled on the April 6 episode of TODAY With Jenna & Sheinelle. “I checked my phone, and guess what time it was? 12:20.”
“So you’d been asleep for two hours underground?” Jenna Bush Hager asked incredulously.
“Two hours in the depths of New York City,” Sheinelle laughed. “And let me tell you something — there was no one there.”
New York City was the last stop on the train, so Sheinelle knew she had to find help.
“‘Surely I’ll find a conductor or something,'” she remembered thinking. But nobody was there.
She pushed the red exit button next to the train doors. Nothing happened.
“Then I try to pry the door open,” Sheinelle said. “And then it hits me after a few minutes, like, ‘Oh, I’m stuck on the train.'”
“Your children weren’t worried about your well-being?” Jenna asked.
Sheinelle laughed that her children weren’t upset at the time. “But they know when I go to Philly, I’ll be on the last train when I get back,” she explained.
“So, long story short, I was sitting there. I had a bruise on my middle finger because I was banging on the (door) … So I called 911,” she said.
Conscious of how she must sound to the emergency operator, Sheinelle remembered trying to be overly polite when she said, “‘I’m really embarrassed about this … but I’m stuck on the train. I’m in Moynihan (Train Hall) in New York City and there’s no one on the train and it’s really dark. Can you come get me?'”
The operator asked which train car Sheinelle was on, but it was too dark to read the number.
She told her to “stay right there,” which made Sheinelle laugh because “where else am I going?” Then, feeling like “a toddler,” Sheinelle asked the operator to remain on the phone with her until help arrived.
When the first police officer arrived 11 minutes later, he said, “‘Sheinelle Jones! My wife loves you! Want to take a selfie?'” Clearly embarrassed, Sheinelle just wanted to get home, but she took a selfie with two police officers who came to her rescue.
“They’re your heroes!” Jenna said.
“I got home and I thought it was going to be like, ‘Mommy! Where have you been?'” Instead, Sheinelle said the kids “were up playing video games” and were neither concerned about nor impressed by her story.
“PSA: if you see someone’s asleep on the train and it’s the last stop, wake ’em up!” Sheinelle said.
