VIDEO: Illinois Officers and Civilian Save Man from Burning SUV`
One's a suburban police officer, the other a retired officer and the third wants to be a cop. They all had the same thought when they came upon an SUV in flames after a crash on the Stevenson Expressway near Darien, Ill.: Get the driver out.
"You do what you have to do," said Wayne Young, 66, a retired Burbank police officer. "I would hope that everybody would do something like that."
The crash occurred around 5:30 a.m. Sunday when a 28-year-old man driving the wrong way on the Stevenson collided with an SUV at Lemont Road, Illinois State Police Sgt. Bruce Orns told the Chicago Tribune.
The wrong-way driver was killed and a young man in the SUV was trapped as it started burning, Orns said.
Romeoville, Ill., Officer Woodsman "Woody" Jones, 38, saw the wreck on the other side of the road. "There were no other vehicles there so I stopped to assist," said Jones, a 13-year veteran of the Romeoville Police Department and a former military officer. Jones, who had been northbound on I-55, called for backup and sped around to the southbound lanes.
At least two other men stopped to help Jones: Young and Ernesto Irizarry of Chicago, an aspiring officer. "We decided we needed to get him out of the vehicle," Jones said.
