The man largely credited with saving a tourist's life after she was struck by a taxi driver on a midtown sidewalk last month is out of work—and he says it's all because of his good deed. "I lost my job for saving this girl!" David Justino tells the Daily News. "All that commotion, my boss had enough of it and decided it would be better to fire me... I think I would have been better off doing heroin than being a hero."
We're guessing there may be more to Justino's termination than all the publicity, but no one at his former employer, Bass Plumbing & Heating, would comment on the allegations when we called today. [SEE UPDATE BELOW] Instead, we just have depressing quotes from Justino like this one: "I should have kept on walking like everybody else. I'd be putting in pipe instead of worrying about paying my bills."
Sian Green, the young woman who lost half of one leg in the crash, finally left the hospital this morning and appeared on The Today Show, telling Matt Lauer “There’s good people in this world, very good people in this world that I can’t thank enough. They saved my life. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now telling this story.” No charges have been filed against cabbie Mohammed Himon, who blamed the crash on a cyclist he was arguing with, but the case is still in the hands of the Manhattan DA's office.
Update 8:01 a.m.: A rep for the plumbing company now says Justino was laid off, along with three other plumbers, due to a lack of work. "In no way did the attention or time spent with the media cause any problem for the company," the unnamed rep told the News in an updated version of their story.
