- An off-duty New York firefighter saved a life on his way home from his shift when he spotted a burning car.
- Nicholas Perri Jr. pulled an injured female driver from the firey single-car wreck on Saturday.
An off-duty New York firefighter saved a life when he pulled a woman from a burning car early Saturday morning, officials said.
Nicholas Perri Jr. was on his way home to Brookfield, Connecticut after finishing a shift with the White Plains Fire Department when he saw the burning car on the side of the road at around 3:15 am, NBC 4 New York reported.
Perri immediately pulled over and began working to make the rescue without any gear or a fire hose, the outlet reported.
"I assessed how she was in there and then I broke the front passenger window. I was able to get one of her legs free, the other was pretty mangled. It was giving me a hard time," Perri said, per NBC 4. "I was just yelling, 'You got to work with me because we are running out of time here.'"
EMS and the Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company, who responded to the single-car accident, praised Perri in a statement on Facebook.
"The jacket he was wearing was burned from the fire. If not for the courageous actions of Mr. Perri, the operator would have burned to death in her vehicle. His actions are a testament to him, the White Plains FD, and the fire service as a whole," the BVFC statement said.
The injured driver was taken to Danbury Hospital for treatment, and Perri was treated for minor injuries at the scene, according to the statement.
"I was the first firefighter on scene from Brookfield, and there was no way that the victim would have survived had he not done what he'd done," BVFC Chief Andrew Ellis told NBC 4.