July 24 (UPI) — An Arkansas traffic camera was recording when a man in a Spider-Man costume pulled off a real-life rescue on a busy road.
Footage shared on social media by the Jonesboro Police Department shows a man in a wheelchair struggling to cross a busy intersection.
A man in a Spider-Man costume then climbs out from the driver’s side door of a vehicle stopped at the red light and gives the man speedy assistance to finish crossing.
The masked man was later identified as Christopher Hellenthal, who had been dressed as the Marvel character for super hero day at his job at Ultimate Air Trampoline Park.
“I was like, ‘All right, I’m in the Spider-Man suit; let’s do this,'” Hellenthal told WREG-TV. “So I just got out and sped them along real fast, so none of us got hit, and everyone was really nice. There was no honking or nothing like that. I just got my vehicle, and I drove off.”
He said his speed in the video was due to the fact that the light had changed just as he was getting out of his vehicle.
Hellenthal hadn’t realized he had become a viral hit until his mother saw the video on Facebook.
“I was taking a nap, and my mom woke me up and said, ‘Hey, you’re on Facebook,'” he said. “I saw that it was the Jonesboro Police Department that put up that video, and we just watched it every hour and every hour. The likes and comments just kept getting higher and higher.”
Hellenthal said he hopes his actions will inspire others.
“I didn’t expect it to blow up like this either. I just thought it would be like a really fun thing to do, but I’m glad that people are seeing it, and I hope that people, whether they’re being watched or not, will step up and do the right thing whenever the time calls for it,” he said.