A 24-Year-Old EMT Climbed onto a Subway Entrance and Used Narcan to Revive an Unconscious Man at the Knicks Parade

Simone Kelly, a 24-year-old volunteer EMT with the South Orange Rescue Squad, administered

A fan perches atop a street sign pole beside a “One Way” sign and a don’t-walk signal as a massive crowd of New York Knicks supporters packs the streets of Lower Manhattan during the team’s parade on June 18, 2026. Photo by Shannon Stapleton / Reuters.

the Narcan that brought an unconscious man back at the Knicks victory parade on June 18, in front of an estimated 2 million fans celebrating the team’s first NBA Finals trip in decades.

@simmykelly

Kelly is from Maplewood, New Jersey, graduated from Columbia High School in 2020, and is a pre-med student at Drew University studying neuroscience, chemistry and psychology. She logs around 60 hours a month on the rescue squad and had flown in from Hong Kong the day before the parade.

She wasn’t the first one up there. Peter Shrieve-Don, a fellow parade-goer with no medical training who was filming on an Insta360, climbed the glass roof of the World Trade Center subway entrance after flagging NYPD officers nearby. He told them the man was “passed out in his vomit” and that his eyes were rolling back. The officers didn’t move.

Kelly and others followed him up. She identified herself as medical, clocked the man’s shallow breathing and pinpoint pupils (a telltale sign of opioid overdose), and called for Narcan. A bystander tossed a kit up to the roof. Kelly gave the nasal spray and did sternum rubs while the crowd around them roared.

One bystander recording the scene can be heard saying, “Look at them just watching. They’re not doing anything.”

An FDNY crew eventually arrived, and the responders and bystanders lowered the man down together so he could be taken for care. Shrieve-Don later called Kelly a hero and said, “You don’t need the whole world to do right all the time. You just need enough people to do right enough of the time.”

After the video spread, Kelly started a GoFundMe for OnPoint NYC, a harm-reduction nonprofit that supports people struggling with addiction and runs two safe injection sites in the city. “I hope having so many eyes shows that we have an epidemic going on,” she said. “Supporting people on their addiction recovery journey has always been a cause I feel strongly about.” She’s urged everyone to carry Narcan, and says she wants to become an emergency psychiatrist focused on addiction and mental health.

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