Steve Newcomb thought he had seen every kind of crash during his years working as an overnight minuteman tow truck driver for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
That was the case until early Friday when, for the first time, he played the role of a first responder and pulled two women from a burning car on the Kennedy Expressway.
The Toyota Camry had crashed into a median near Addison Street about 2 a.m. and spun out into lanes of traffic, according to Illinois State Police.
When Newcomb arrived, it wasn’t obvious people were stuck inside the car that was slowly filling with smoke, he said.
“I thought someone had gotten a flat,” Newcomb said.
From his tow truck, he called out on his public address system to the bystanders gathered on the shoulder, “Is anyone hurt? Does anyone need an ambulance?”
Someone waved him off, indicating to him everything was OK, he said. So Newcomb proceeded to place flares and attempt to push the wrecked car out from under the underpass to protect the bridge from the growing fire, he said.
“Then I noticed there was someone in the car,” Newcomb told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I walked up to the door and the lady was screaming that she was in pain. She said, ‘Please help me, my legs are broken and I can’t move.’ She was crying.”
Newcomb opened the driver’s door and grabbed her, he said, pulling her to safety on the shoulder. He ran back for the passenger, but her door was locked. He called out for her to open the door, which she eventually did, and removed her to safety.
Waiting for EMS to arrive, Newcomb said he tended to the women, who were “both pretty out of it.”
He placed a doormat under one of the women who couldn’t sit up on her own.
The other woman tried returning to the car to retrieve her phone. “I told her she can’t. They didn’t know the car was on fire,” Newcomb said.
Firefighters arrived soon after and put out the fire, he said. Paramedics took the women, ages 18 and 19, to hospitals, where they were treated for serious injuries that were not life-threatening, according to state police and the Chicago Fire Department.
Newcomb has been working for the Illinois Department of Transportation for 22 years, most of them doing maintenance, plowing and grass cutting, he said. He’s been doing minuteman patrols for five years.
“I’ve seen every kind of crash,” he said. “But I’ve never been on scene where there was a fire where I could pull someone out.”
