More Than 1 Million View Video of Trucker Pulling Baby from Burning Car
This story appears in the Aug. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.
The car-truck collision and resulting fireball on a Mississippi stretch of Interstate 10 was as spectacular as it was chilling.
And the first instinct that David Fredericksen and Walter Letterman had as they approached the scene Aug. 11 in their Oakley Transport truck, making a Florida-to-California run in a semi-tanker, was that no one could have survived the flames that had engulfed the Lincoln Town Car, which lost control merging onto the interstate and striking an 18-wheeler.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on!” driver Fredericksen exclaimed as he braked to avoid the fiery accident and debris just in front of him at the intersection of Highway 49 and I-10, north of Gulfport.
“Holy cow!” his partner, Walter Letterman, said. “That guy’s dead.”
But while drivers in other vehicles either sped away from the scene or pulled over and stayed in their cars, Fredericksen grabbed a fire extinguisher and jumped out of his cab.
“It was my faith that got me out of the truck to do it,” he said.
Fredericksen used the fire extinguisher to calm the flames, then pulled a 1-year-old girl from the back seat of the burning car while others, including Letterman, joined in to control the fire or help remove the child’s grandmother from the front seat.
The episode was captured on video from a camera mounted on Fredericksen’s dashboard. An entire week went by before Fredericksen, 45, a father of four from Palm Coast, Florida, mentioned it to his son Logan, 26, who posted the video on YouTube.
The video went viral, with more than 2 million views as of Aug. 28 and led to coverage by news outlets including ABC’s “Good Morning, America.”
Now, Fredericksen is being hailed as the “hero truck driver” who stepped up before anyone else did.
“I don’t feel like a hero; I feel like a Good Samaritan,” he told Transport Topics by phone Aug. 19, while he and Letterman (who was driving) were making another Florida-to-California run.
The co-drivers haul orange juice out to California and typically bring lemon juice back in a 48-hour, 2,700-mile journey each way.
“I was just praying that they were alive. I figured if they were dead, I could at least put the fire out,” Fredericksen said.
As it turned out, the passengers in the car escaped relatively unharmed, according to Gulfport police, as did the driver of the
18-wheeler. Fredericksen first pried open the passenger-side door of the automobile but then spotted the child in the back seat and tended to her first. “Her eyes were big; she was in shock,” Fredericksen said.
Fredericksen, a truck driver for five years, said safety is always on his mind while on the road. “I have two co-drivers: Walter Letterman and God,” he said. “I put my life in their hands every day.”
And he is happy for any positive light the incident might shine on truck drivers.
“We’re often the first responders,” he said of their presence on the highways. “We get out of the truck with the fire extinguishers and the first-aid kits and try to help people until the police and firemen get there.”
