The good Samaritan who jumped onto Manhattan subway tracks to save a straphanger shoved by a naked homeless man is a disabled Army vet who insists he’s no hero — he was just trying to set an example for the teens he now mentors.

Tyler Horrell, 55, told The Post on Sunday that he leaped into action at the 110th Street/Lenox Avenue station Saturday when nude attacker Malik Jackson, who had 23 prior arrests, pushed a man onto the tracks, leaving the victim looking “lifeless” on the rail bed as a No. 3 train rounded the bend.

As other train riders screamed in horror, Horrell jumped down onto the tracks to try to help the victim to safety — prompting the stark-naked Jackson to leap after him. Jackson, who was the subject of at least 15 previous disturbance calls in the neighborhood, eventually hit the third rail and was fatally electrocuted.

Horrell — a Missouri native and disabled former serviceman who now works in youth services at the nonprofit United Settlement, where he mentors troubled youngsters — was humble about his actions.

“I’m not a hero,” he said. “The 12- to 18-year-old boys I work with, I try to teach them, ‘It’s not what you’ve done. You’re on probation. But you can be the change in the world you want there to be.’ I try to teach them they can be mentors.”

The straphanger was at the No. 2 and No. 3 station at Central Park North around 3:40 p.m. when the drama began to unfold.

He said there were about 25 people on the platform, one of whom told him that the 35-year-old Jackson had been gyrating in front of a woman at the station minutes earlier.

Horrell said other straphangers started screaming when Jackson — who lived in a local homeless shelter — shoved the stranger. Police sources said the pushed man also is homeless.

“Fortunately, I could see him laying on the track,” Horrell recalled of the shoved victim. But “I didn’t think the train was going to be able to stop. He seemed lifeless.

“I jumped down and tried to pick him up,” he said. “In the course of trying to pick him up, the naked guy appeared, squatting on the platform, looking at me. I said, ‘Go on, man. Get out of here!’ I didn’t expect him to jump at me.”

“He didn’t say anything,” Horrell said of the deranged attacker. “He just tried to swing at me. I took a swing at him. He was on drugs or something. There’s a lot of drug use down in that subway.

“When he leaped at me, we both went to the ground,” Horrell said. “He didn’t even make a sound when he hit the rail. He didn’t make a sound the whole time.

“The close proximity I was to the third rail, a foot away, inches from his body,” he said. “Something jumped, emanated from him. I don’t know if I touched him or what. It came in through him into the middle finger on my right hand.

“He started smoking, and then you smell the stench,” Horrell said. “I’ve never smelled anything like it before. It was a putrid smell, the skin and, my goodness.”

The violent encounter left Horrell with a stiff shoulder — but both he and the stranger who was shoved escaped serious injury.

Jackson was pronounced dead at the scene.

The attacker had been living at the Columbia Hotel shelter on West 110th Street, workers and residents there said Sunday. 

“I think I’ve seen him numerous times walking along the double yellow lines in the middle of 110th Street,” said Horrell, who lives in the neighborhood. 

“I wish someone would have called earlier,” he said, referring to the possibility of alerting authorities about Jackson’s bizarre behavior before the subway push. “He’d be alive.”

Another resident of the Columbia Hotel told The Post that several people there tried to stop Jackson when he ran out of the shelter crazed and naked Saturday.

“He ran out with no clothes,” said the man, who asked not to be identified. “I yelled, ‘Yo, you gonna freeze.’ Two fellas tried stopping him, but he was gone.

“One guy chased him down the block but he never caught him,” the man said. “He was on something.”

Sources said Jackson had at least 23 prior arrests, most recently a 2015 turnstile-jumping charge. 

His most serious unsealed offense was a robbery charge in Queens in 2013, when he was charged with pickpocketing someone at a local supermarket, the sources said. 

Jackson also had been arrested for drug possession, trespassing, assault and resisting arrest.

He was the subject of 15 emotionally-disturbed-person calls, too. 

“He’s low-level,” a police source said. “Pretty minor stuff.”

Horrell said that despite the near-death ordeal, he feels for Jackson and his family.

“Remember, the mentally ill guy, he has a family too,” he said. “They are getting a call this morning. It’s cold out. If he’s naked, something ain’t right.”

Jackson’s brother declined to immediately comment to The Post.