CLARKSVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- A Clarksville police sergeant is being hailed as a hero after pulling an injured man from a burning pickup truck following a violent crash that left the highway looking like the aftermath of an explosion.
Sgt. Ryan Roederer didn’t hesitate when he came upon the overturned vehicle engulfed in flames Sunday on Interstate 65.
With the fire quickly intensifying and the driver barely able to move, Roederer used what little he had — a single fire extinguisher handed to him by a bystander — to try to beat back the blaze.
“It didn’t go far,” Roederer said. “I used what I had with me. That was courage.”
The crash had thrown the driver across the cab of his truck, pinning him near the passenger door. Injured and disoriented, he struggled to crawl away as smoke and flames grew thicker by the second.
"Sir, can you hear me? Can you crawl out this way?" Roederer called out through the haze.
Body camera footage shows Roederer’s repeated attempts to reach the man as the engine compartment burned hotter and darker smoke filled the air.
“I used all of (the extinguisher)," he said. "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 soon arrived with a larger fire extinguisher, but even that couldn’t stop the blaze. As the flames raged, the trooper handed off the extinguisher and tried breaking the truck’s windshield to free the driver.
Still, Roederer pressed forward.
“Can you get out through the back? Come on, sir, come on,” he urged.
Eventually, the injured driver crawled within reach. Roederer and the trooper pulled him from the cab—just in time.
“Once I got ahold of him, though, there was nothing that was going to stop me from getting him out of there,” said Roederer.
The man, whose name was not released, was loaded into an ambulance and taken to University of Louisville Hospital. Roederer never had a chance to speak with him.
“I don’t know if he was in shock. As soon as we got him out, he went straight to the ambulance,” Roederer said. “I never talked to him once.”
Indiana State Police are handling the crash investigation. The driver is expected to survive.
"If he wanted to see me, I would shake his hand," Roederer added.
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