“Guardian Angel” Rescues Stranded Driver From Certain Death
Posted June 27, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was that ‘uh oh’ feeling we all get when there’s a sign of car trouble. But for one Huntsville woman driving on the 400 near Sheppard late Monday, it was something else – the feeling of seeing her life flash before her eyes.
The trouble began for Barbara O’Rourke when her SUV suddenly quit in the darkness on the busy highway. She was in the left hand passing lane heading northbound and wasn’t able to get over to the shoulder.
She tried to restart her engine, but it refused to turn over. So she turned on her flashers and prepared to wait for help.
And that’s when fate – and a guardian angel – intervened.
A Good Samaritan stopped to help the becalmed driver and guided her to the shoulder, telling her it wasn’t safe to stay in the car.
“He urged her to get the heck out of her van,” explains O.P.P. Sgt. Cam Woolley. “She came over to the shoulder. She was only here seconds when a flat van truck struck and destroyed her van and…rolled over. There’s no question had she still been in her van she would have been seriously injured or killed.”
O’Rourke knows she dodged a traffic bullet and can hardly believe she’s still here to talk about it.
“The truck hit my van from behind,” she remembers. “I’m still pretty shaken up. I could have been killed…It was horrible.”
Ironically, her son-in-law is a tow truck driver who cleans up after similar accidents. He shudders to think what might have happened if his relative had made a different decision.
“Unfortunately, when it gets fresh like that and there’s somebody in there, you end up with injuries and fatals,” sighs Lou Medeiros.
It wasn’t that long ago that the city was reeling from a similar tragedy.
You’ll likely remember the case of five-year-old Justin Nerit, whose father stopped to help a stalled driver on the Gardiner Expressway last March. When another vehicle reared ended the stopped car on the side of the road, the young boy suffered critical injuries and died in hospital. His father was inconsolable.
Cops contend if you’re ever in that situation you should always try to reach the paved shoulder. If you can’t, make sure you don’t stay in the path of danger.
“If you are in a live lane where the traffic is moving, it is safer to try to get away from the vehicle,” Woolley reminds.
“If something bad does happen, it is definitely safer to not be near the vehicle. There is a high likelihood of a vehicle being struck, especially in traffic volumes like this where vehicles are moving quickly. It only takes one vehicle to be following too close. It moves out of the way and you are hit.”
The truck driver suffered minor injuries, leaving all but one northbound lane closed for hours.
As for O’Rourke, she’s contemplating the gift of life from a whole new perspective she could never have imagined 24 hours ago.
“I know that if I had have been in the vehicle, I definitely would have not survived,” she concludes quietly.
