Christmas came early on the R line.
A Bronx man miraculously escaped death Saturday morning when he laid down between the subway tracks at Union Square as an uptown train hurtled at — and then over him.
“I heard screaming. He was reaching out to the people reaching out to help him, but there wasn’t enough time to grab him,” eyewitness Suzannah Troy told The Post. “He went back to the middle. His head turned looking at the train. [Then] he’s right under the train! He’s right here!”
The man, who police identified as 55-year-old Ralph Mercado, escaped by lying on his belly in the trench between the rails of the Broadway local. The only injury he suffered was a bruise to his left hand.
He was listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, where he’s undergoing a psychological evaluation.
Mercado told cops he jumped onto the tracks to save a woman who’d fallen, but witnesses said there was no woman, that Mercado was the one who fell.
Troy, a Manhattan artist, didn’t know why the slim man was on the tracks at 11:38 am, but said he “chose to save his life.”
“He did like a push up and went down. It rolled right over him,” she said. “The train was moving as slow as possible.”
Troy videotaped the aftermath of the disturbing near-miss. In her recording, city transit workers begin to remove the man just minutes after the miraculous rail roll.
“He’s in the trough. Don’t move,” a transit worker yelled on the video, which Troy posted on YouTube. “I need power off on the two track.”
“He’s alive,” one bystander can be heard saying.
Scores of others have not been as lucky this year, according to a NYC Transit spokesman. In 2013, 145 people were struck by subway trains, and 52 died as a result, Kevin Ortiz said.
In 2012, 141 people were struck and 55 died.
Just five years ago, in a situation eerily similar to the one that unfolded Saturday, Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker, saved Cameron Hollopeter, who was suffering from a seizure and had fallen on the tracks under the 137th St. platform.
As the 1 train barreled forward, Autrey jumped down with him and pinned him down in the trough between the tracks as the train rattled overhead.