Yonkers Firefighter Rescues Couple After Pickup Truck Goes Off Road Into River
YONKERS, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- An off-duty fire captain came to the rescue of a couple whose pickup truck went off the road and into a river in Westchester County.
Capt. Robert "Butch" Smith of Station 9 in Yonkers was driving Sunday evening when he witnessed the truck go into the Saw Mill River near the parkway's Odell Avenue overpass.
"As it came off the guardrail, it went across the highway and down the embankment and flipped up into the river," he told WCBS 880's Sean Adams.
Smith found the truck on its side and partially submerged with a man and a woman inside.
The driver's side was underwater. The driver and passenger were by the passenger's-side door frantically trying to get out, CBS2's Lou Young reported.
"They were pushing up at the passenger's-side window, just looking at me, pounding on the windshield and just losing it," Smith said.
"That's when I took the rock and I broke the corner of the windshield and got a hand hold on it and pulled the windshield out and took them out through the windshield area," he said.
Smith helped pulled the middle-aged man out and carried the young woman to the safety of the riverbank. The two were shaken and bruised but alive and grateful. Neither required hospitalization.
The rescue took an estimated two minutes from start to finish. Smith said the accident happened just after a line of rainstorms moved through the area, forming a deep puddle on the low-lying parkway.
Smith said he doesn't want praise. He says any other firefighter would have done the same thing.
"We're not firefighters during our tours," he said. "We're firefighters 24/7/365."
Such occurrences are happening quite a bit lately.
"We had one last month where good Samaritans were the first ones in the river to help the people, and in a few months we're going to be honoring our members who pulled two women out of the Bronx River Parkway last year," said Eric Dronzek, assistant fire chief.
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