Man saves driver trapped inside burning car

WFTS, CHRISTA VALLEY, CNN

By Jada Williams

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    SEMINOLE, Florida (WFTS) — Returning to the parking lot of Second Time Around Consignment in Seminole, Travis DuPont couldn’t help but get chills.

“I’m like right here talking to the guy and then reaching in and pulling him out,” he explained, gesturing to where he was standing just a little more than a day later. “I’m just thankful that I got him out of there just in time. If I was any earlier, I would have missed him. If I was any later, you know, he might have not been here,” he said.

Earlier Sunday morning, right before 3:30, as DuPont was driving home from work, he saw a flash and a pop in the distance.

“I turned my radio off my car immediately. And I’m just trying to listen and see if there’s like any smoke. I was looking up. And as I was approaching, looking up at the telephone pole. I happen to look down, and I see the man’s car almost in the entire shopping center smashed in. And I just immediately pulled into the parking lot,” he explained.

In a flash, DuPont approached the car. At first, he tried to wake the driver up to get him out of the car as he dialed 911. But a flame from the car made DuPont really spring into action.

“That’s when I knew I had to step it up a gear and really take him out of the car. I reach over, click the seat belt, and try pulling him out. But because the car was so squished in, the steering wheel was pushed forward, so its legs lock down a little bit,” he said.

DuPont eventually managed to get the driver over. Video from a bystander captured to heroic moment he pulled the driver through the window and carried him into safety.

“When the fire started, that’s when I really like knew something had to be done like right now. I needed to like really, really take action like there’s no messing around. I needed to get this guy out of the car. Of course, I was scared. I was more scared that like maybe I had forgotten somebody else was in the car or like I had overlooked something. You know, adrenaline is rushing so fast.”

DuPont said moments after pulling the driver from the car, it became engulfed in flames.

“The firefighter was taking her notes. The car had actually exploded about like a minute later after I carried him away. It wasn’t necessarily like a fire explosion. It was a big boom, like a bomb that went off right in the parking lot.”

Florida Highway Patrol believes the 28-year-old driver was impaired when he crashed into the storefront.

On Monday, the shattered windows were covered in plywood. Scorch marks wrapped around one cement column and another column was on the ground. That column had flown into the store one day earlier.

“Thank God the beams were there because he would have been probably through the back of the shop. He’s fine. They pulled him out of the car. So it could have been horrific,” Christa Cius said.

Christa Cius owns Second Time Around. She and her team worked tirelessly to clean up the damage to reopen for business.

In fact, this isn’t the first time the team has gone through something like this. Cius said a drunk driver crashed into the store back in 2017.

“Everyone’s alive. The shop is a strong little shop. It’s been around for 35 years,” she said.

Damaged goods filled the dumpster. Inside the store, fans rumbled to try to get rid of the smell.

But the support from the community made it easier for the store to move ahead.

Meantime, DuPont’s message to the community is to always think of others.

“I just hope that if anybody else had been there, I would hope they would have the same instinct to like, go in and do the same thing and help somebody out. So if you see anything like that happen, if authorities haven’t already arrived. Just immediately do whatever you can to help because somebody might be in like terrible trouble,” he said.

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