PORTLAND -- Aaron Bailey faced a father’s worst nightmare on a TriMet platform when he was accidentally separated from his three-year-old son, Aiden, after an apparent train malfunction.
It was all caught on tape. At 8:15 a.m. Monday, Aaron Bailey was taking his son to Head Start. The green line was approaching the Main Street Platform when the doors opened.
I "had him in my hand... and when he was exiting, he pulled the handicap button, “ Bailey explained.
What happened next would be terrifying for any father. As Aiden stepped out onto the platform, the doors shut, separating the child from his father.
"I frantically tried to push the open button, but they didn’t open, “ said Bailey.
He panicked and pushed the intercom button ten times, but no one answered.
Fortunately, a Good Samaritan who had been standing on the MAX platform took little Aiden by the hand and the two waited on a bench. Still, Bailey was panicked, and when the train started rolling, his son was stranded.
"I left him with a complete stranger," Bailey said.
Bailey jumped off the train at the next stop and jumped on the next one heading in the opposite direction as Aiden waited for seven minutes with the kind woman.
"We embraced and I cried for a minute and then I hugged her (the Good Samaritan) and we cried for a minute,” Bailey said.
But once the relief passed, Bailey started getting angry.Why did the train doors close? Why didn’t the intercom work?
"This is an unfortunate situation” said Mary Fetsch, a spokesperson for TriMet, “ We had a door that didn’t open and we had a radio intercom that didn’t work. Seven minutes is a long time to be separated from your kids."
Before Aiden left, he made a point to hug the woman who stayed with him until his dad came back. The boy also made a promise to his dad: "Daddy, I will never push a button again.”
