When the two Norton, Ohio patrolmen saw the car in the middle of the street Sunday night, fully engulfed in flames, they started sprinting.
Somebody is in the car, patrolman Brody Fratantonio thought to himself, he told local television station WOIO.
A 60-year-old man had passed out at the wheel and wasn’t responding. It wasn’t the first time Fratantonio had helped an unconscious man out of a car, due in large part to the rise in opioid overdoses. Fratantonio had even purchased his own pocket knife with a glass breaker to help smash open car windows during calls such as this one.
“I have adrenaline going through the roof,” Fratantonio said. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘somebody is in there, I have to act now.'”
Using the knife, he broke out the driver’s window, pulling open the door handle from the inside with the help of his partner, patrolman Scott Seabold. The dramatic scene that followed was captured on a body cam video, and the officers can be heard yelling.
“Come on out, Buddy,” one of the officers shouted. “We’re here to save you man, we’re here to save you!”
Together, the two patrolmen quickly pulled the 160-pound man out of the burning vehicle, dragging him about 50 yards away, toward the patrol cruiser. “Keep going, keep going,” they can be heard saying in the video.
—
This is gonna blow, Fratantonio thought.
They acted just in time. As soon as the officers had laid the man down on the ground, a blast can be heard and seen in the video. The car exploded.
“Stay down, stay down,” the officers are heard saying. “Talk to me, man. What’s your name?” they asked.
The man was Lowell C. Sears, a 60-year-old from Norton. Emergency medical responders administered naloxone to revive him, and he would later admit to having taken cocaine and alcohol that night. He was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, among other charges.
“I remember seeing double and that was about it,” Sears told News 5. “I guess I blanked out and when I came to I was in a paramedics vehicle.”
“I’m glad you got there when you did, it’s a very good thing to be alive,” he added, in reference to the officers.
Nothing could have quite prepared him for Sunday night’s rescue, Seabold told WOIO.
“It’s kind of like a movie, something you would never think of and then all of a sudden it happens and you have to react,” Seabold said.
After saving the man, and escaping the car’s flames before it exploded, the two officers simply looked at each other, giving each other a fist-bump with their knuckles.
Featured Image:
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท
