'Somebody had to get that woman out'

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 Things like this make me feel good for being a human, They are our daily heroes.This one I had to share,Namaste to all,Liane

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Posted on Wed, Jul. 01, 2009

'Somebody had to get that woman out'

By JOHN MONKjmonk@...

Two men — a police officer and a laundry assistant manager — braved a burning car to save a stranger seconds before the car exploded into an inferno because, they said, they couldn’t live with themselves if they hadn’t acted.

“I just couldn’t stand by and watch while someone burned to death,†said Whittle, 36, a city of Columbia traffic safety officer who was driving toward downtown when he came across the Forest Acres accident.

s Sr., 37, who came running from his job at the nearby 2.50 Cleaners, said: “People were shouting, ‘Don’t touch the car! Don’t touch the car!’ But somebody had to get that woman out. My heart told me to go.â€

The two saved a dazed lin Luther, 52, of Columbia, from what witnesses and police said was certain death. Within a minute or so, her blue Ford Focus was a fireball gushing black smoke.

Watching was a crowd of some 70 as a humdrum Monday afternoon on Forest Drive became a Hollywood disaster scene: fires, explosions, downed power lines and a blinding flash of light.

Alone in acting: Whittle and s.

“You could call them heroes — absolutely,†said Forest Acres police chief Gene Sealy, saying the pair saved Luther’s life.

“They took some chances. There were wires on the car. That would’ve made a lot of people not go because they were scared of being electrocuted.â€

A Clemson University expert who studies those people who act in the face of danger said they can often do so because they cannot imagine doing anything less. Heroes also can quickly assess a situation and see a way to act that others don’t, said associate professor of psychology Pury.

Both were true with Whittle and s — who spotted the dazed woman in the front seat, along with a deployed air bag, after the one-car accident.

s said even though people were warning him about power lines, he judged the car, with its rubber tires, was grounded — meaning he probably wouldn’t get electrocuted.

Whittle, too, said he quickly made a judgment that the power lines on the car were away from the door, and the blaze was lapping under the car — small enough that he figured he had a small window of time to act.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the crowd watched.

Clemson’s Pury said such “bystander†behavior is normal because a suddenly dangerous situation is so out of the ordinary that it takes people a long time to process everything happening around them.

s’ co-worker Tarsha McAlister, 38, said she was paralyzed at the first enormous boom and a flash as she watched from inside the laundry, about 50 yards away.

“But just took off. He didn’t wait even a split second.â€

The flash “was brighter than the sun,†said Matt O’Hara, 24, a sales representative in a nearby Sprint store. He ran over to the car, found it burning, and saw Whittle and s at the driver’s door.

s said he and Whittle, a 12-year veteran of Columbia’s police department, reached the burning car at the same time. Ironically, neither spoke during the rescue, but they worked well — wordlessly — together. They needed each other to save the woman, they said.

Luther said by phone she is banged up but, thankfully, “up and still walking.â€

She said she doesn’t remember much about the incident, in which her car swerved off Forest Drive, hit a utility pole and snapped it in half, creating the resulting havoc. She was hospitalized briefly.

Police have charged her with “careless driving,†Sealy said.

A medical technician who is on leave from Columbia’s Veterans Hospital, Luther said she has been so worried lately about her daughter, who has cancer, that she let herself get rundown to the extent that she passed out while driving.

“God bless those two men who pulled me out,†she said.

Reach Monk at (803) 771-8344.

© 2009 TheState.com and wire service sources. . http://www.thestate.com