An Indiana top cop is being hailed as a real-life action hero after pulling an injured man from a burning pickup truck.
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On Sunday, Sgt. Ryan Roederer encountered an overturned vehicle engulfed in flames on Interstate 65 in Clarksville, Indiana. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprang into action. As the fire grew rapidly and the driver struggled to move, Roederer made the most of the limited resources at hand—a single fire extinguisher provided by a bystander—to battle the advancing blaze.
“It didn’t go far,” Roederer told local outlet WDRB. “I used what I had with me. That was courage.”
The crash had hurled the driver across the truck’s cab, trapping him against the passenger door. Disoriented and injured, he fought to crawl to safety as the smoke thickened and flames rapidly spread.
“Sir, can you hear me? Can you crawl out this way?” Roederer belts out in the Body Camera video shared by the outlet.
The footage captures Roederer’s relentless efforts to reach the man as flames intensified in the engine compartment, sending thick, dark smoke billowing into the air.
“I used all of (the extinguisher),” he told WDRB. “It kind of maybe slowed the fire down from spreading to the cab, but I wasn’t putting a hurt on the fire at all.”
A State Trooper Arrives to Aid Cop Struggling to Rescue Man From Burning Truck
A state trooper arrived shortly after, carrying a larger fire extinguisher. Despite their efforts, the flames continued to roar uncontrollably. Passing the extinguisher to another responder, the trooper turned their focus to the driver, attempting to shatter the truck’s windshield in a desperate bid to free them.
Nevertheless, Roederer persisted.
“Can you get out through the back? Come on, sir, come on,” he encouraged the man.
Eventually, the injured driver managed to crawl close enough. Roederer and the trooper pulled him out of the cab before matters got even worse.
“Once I got a hold of him, though, there was nothing that was going to stop me from getting him out of there,” Roederer told the outlet.
However, the top cop never got a chance to speak with the man he helped rescue.
“I don’t know if he was in shock. As soon as we got him out, he went straight to the ambulance,” Roederer recalled. “I never talked to him once.”
“If he wanted to see me, I would shake his hand,” the police Sergeant told the outlet.
The Indiana State Police are leading the investigation into the crash. The driver is expected to recover.