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Dashboard video shows cops pulling man from burning car Dashboard video shows cops pulling man from burning car
(about 17 hours later)
A Montgomery County police officer was behind the wheel of his patrol car at 12:19 a.m. when he got the call: a wreck on the Capital Beltway. Six months after they first met — but never spoke — Rashad Isreal and two Montgomery County police officers talked Friday.
Three minutes later, Cody Fields rolled up to a burning car. The stop, captured on his dashboard video recorder, probably saved the unconscious driver’s life and has led to Fields’s receiving his department’s highest award, the Medal of Valor. He and other officers will be recognized during a ceremony on Friday. “Y’all were very fast,” Isreal said. “Ten seconds longer, I wouldn’t be here.”
The rescue unfolded early the morning of Sept. 1, on the left shoulder of the Outer Loop of the Beltway, between Georgia and Connecticut avenues. What follows is based on the dashboard video — released late Thursday night — and the official police account: He may well be right.
Fields could see that the car was stopped against the concrete barrier and that the engine area was burning. He ran to the passenger side and saw a man behind the wheel who appeared to be unconscious. The passenger side door was locked; the window was up. Fields used his baton to break the passenger window, reach in and unlock the door. Early on the morning of Sept. 1, driving alone on the Capital Beltway just north of Washington, Isreal fell asleep. His Toyota Camry drifted left, struck a concrete barrier and caught on fire.
By then, a second officer — Brian Nesbitt, who had just arrived — ran up to the car. He got into the rear passenger side. A passerby called 911.
With the fire spreading, both officers pulled out the driver and dragged him away from the vehicle. Officer Cody Fields, 24, pulled up three minutes later. He got out and — as captured on his dashboard video recorder — ran to the burning car, saw an unconscious man inside and used his baton to smash a passenger-side window.
Paramedics soon arrived, treated the 34-year-old man and took him to a hospital. He survived. Less than 30 seconds later, Officer Brian Nesbitt pulled up and ran to the car. As flames spread from the engine and at their feet, the two officers leaned into the car, pulled Isreal out and got him away from the fire before handing him over to medics moments later.
Rescue workers on the scene said “that if not for the quick and heroic actions of Officer Fields and Officer Nesbitt, the driver would have succumbed to either smoke inhalation or the flames from the fire,” a police spokesman said Thursday. Isreal, 34, was unconscious for much of the rescue, remembering only the ambulance ride to a hospital.
Nesbitt also is expected to be given a Medal of Valor. He has been on the force for 12 years. Fields has been on the force for three years. “I’m very thankful to both y’all,” Isreal told the officers Friday as the three met at a Marriott hotel and conference center in North Bethesda, where the officers were cited for their bravery at an annual awards ceremony.
Their actions are among many to be recognized Friday at the 42nd Annual Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce - Public Safety Awards. Police officials also reunited the three by bringing Isreal and his fiancee to the luncheon where Isreal for the first time saw the dashboard recording.
“I’m not even moving or nothing,” he said, stunned, while watching it on a phone. “Oh my goodness.”
Isreal had worked long hours, been at a friend’s house, and was so tired he fell asleep while driving that night, he said.
For the officers, the incident began at 12:19 a.m. with a call for a crash on the outer loop of the Beltway, between Georgia and Connecticut avenues.
As Fields, a Manhattan native who has been on the force for three years, pulled up, he saw tall flames in the front of the car and that the driver’s side was lodged against the barrier. He ran toward the passenger door.
As he did, Fields hoped information he’d heard over the radio — that there possibly was a person trapped — was wrong. But it wasn’t.
The car door was locked. The window was up. The smoke and flames were growing.
Fields took out his baton and swung at the window. “I was covering my face and just swinging away,” he said Friday.
He finally broke the glass, reached in, unlocked and opened the door.
At that moment, Nesbitt, 35, ran up from behind.
“There’s somebody in the car!” Fields yelled.
Nesbitt opened a rear door.
The officers had trouble getting the unconscious driver out of his seat belt. They still aren’t sure how they did it, but they think they pulled him out without unbuckling it.
Then, another hurdle: The driver fell head-first to the passenger side, front floorboard, making it even harder to pull him out.
Nesbitt could see parts of the dashboard and areas around the windows starting to melt. He worried the driver might be dead. He realized he and Fields had only a few more seconds before they would have to back away.
“We either do this now or we’re done,” he yelled at Fields.
They dragged the driver out, with one of them stumbling onto the pavement as they pulled him free.
Fields was about to start CPR but Nesbitt felt a pulse and saw the man taking shallow breaths.
On the highway, many vehicles rolled past, a few slowed and pulled over, and two men, one carrying what appears to be a small fire extinguisher, arrived at a median as the officers worked.
Isreal grew up in Rockville and spent about 15 years in Los Angeles with his dad, a Vietnam Veteran who died of lung cancer in 2009. He remains close with his mother and his sisters and works as a massage therapist.
His only memory of the crash: coming-to in the ambulance.
“Mr. Isreal,” a medic said.
“What’s going on?” Isreal remembers asking, before being told about crashing his car. “Did anybody get hurt? Did I hurt anybody?”
At the hospital, Isreal was treated for burns to his back and released that night, he said.
But the potentially deadly crash has had lasting impact. Isreal said he has trouble traveling on busy roads, especially if he is alone and driving.
“I’m really scared to be on the freeway by myself,” he said.