Click here if the video above fails to play
Jenny Drabble, Winston-Salem Journal:
Three good Samaritans and seven police officers have been honored for their rapid response in the fiery bus crash at the intersection of Cherry Street and Polo Road on Sept. 6.
The bus turned in front of a Ford F-150 pickup truck shortly before 7 a.m.Winston-Salem Police Corporal James Gerald was nearby and said he could already see the smoke from a mile away.
Gerald arrived to find the bus and truck tangled, shrouded in smoke and flames. The driver of the truck, Terry Wayne McCarney Jr., was trapped inside the burning vehicle with the dashboard collapsed on his legs.
Leonard Rogers told FOX8 last week that he was driving by at the time of the accident and stopped to help.
“I seen the guy trapped in the truck when we pulled up and the truck was on fire and my first instinct was to do whatever I could to help him out,” Rogers said.
Rogers helped police use fire extinguishers in an attempt to put the fire out, but the man inside the vehicle, Terry McCariney, was still in danger.
Police say Rogers then put himself in danger and used a chain from his truck to pull the burning truck out from under the school bus with his truck. Rogers says the fact that he even had the chain was a life-saving coincidence. Just last Friday he put the chain in his truck.
