A MYSTERY good Samaritan has been identified following an appeal in last week’s Chronicle.

Student Alisha Durand got in touch last week to say she wanted to publicly thank the mystery biker who flagged down the bus she was travelling on through Great Houghton when it was smoking severely.

After checking everyone was OK and there was no fire, the mystery man wwent home on his motorbike, swapped it for his car, and came back to ferry the remaining passengers back home.

Alisha, originally from Kent, said you ‘don’t see things like that down south’.

This week, readers got in touch to say the mystery man was Chris Jones, a lorry driver from Thurnscoe.

But they’d recognised him only from the description of him and his car, not what he did, as Chris hadn’t told anyone about it.

“After I’d dropped them off, I had to go and get my car sorted out, tracking and wheel balancing,” said Chris, 34, who lives off Common Road.

“I forgot all about it. It wasn’t until Sunday when my sister-in-law asked my wife ‘is your Chris a Good Samaritan’, asking if I’d helped people on a bus. I said ‘how does she know about that’. I’d not mentioned it to anyone.

“It was smoking really badly. I was trying to get the attention of people on the bus to tell the driver. I tried waving him down but I don’t think he knew what I was doing. I decided to go on ahead, and I knew the lollipop lady would be outside the school, so I went on to ask her to stop him and tell him.”

The bus pulled over and Chris went back to check everyone was OK. “I did think there might have been a fire at first,” he said. “But everyone was fine.”

He then took three passengers home to Thurnscoe after first going home to swap his motorbike for his car.

Chris and Alisha were reunited this week so she could thank him personally for his act of pubic-spirited kindness.

“It’s nice to be appreciated. People aren’t always keen to stop and help others these days,” said Chris.