A group of bystanders banded together on the Pennsylvania turnpike to help save a trapped man from a precarious situation .
The incident occurred Friday, Jan. 22, during the blizzard that dumped record amounts of snow along the east coast.
Arlyn Satanek, a driver for Pleasant Trucking, was about 32 kilometres outside Bedford, Pa., when the weather became too severe to continue.
“At that point I was on my brakes with everything I had and hoping I didn’t lose control,” Satanek told WTAE News in Pittsburgh.
“I saw the truck out in front of me pretty much finishing his wipe out and cutting off the entire two lanes of traffic and angling down over the cliff.”
Witnesses describe a trail of broken glass, leaked fuel, and debris leading up to the truck, which was dangling precariously off the side of the freeway and over a steep incline – with the driver trapped in the cab.
“He was twisted in his cab pretty good,” Satanek told XPXI News in Pittsburgh. “His saving grace was that there were a lot of trees on the hillside.”
Within moments, bystanders formed a human chain in an effort to retrieve the trapped man.
“It was just like everyone knew in that moment we have to reach him, ‘Let’s lock into this and get this guy up.’ It was awesome,” Satanek said.
It was Satanek who snapped the above photo, one which immediately made the rounds in local media.
READ MORE: Massive prison break caught on camera in Brazil as 40 inmates escape
“I decided I knew they had him, and I wanted to get a picture, I want to remember this,” Satanek said.
Within 15 minutes, the driver of the truck had been retrieved from his truck and was walking around.
Comments