Dallas man rescues Temple teen from fiery crash
DALLAS, Ga. - A Temple mother is holding her son a bit tighter tonight following a fiery crash on Carl Haley road Wednesday.
Vanessa Pugh says her son Ethan is alive today in large part because of a stranger’s willingness to help.
Sixteen-year-old Ethan was driving home from work, unfazed by the darkness or the rain drizzling on the windshield. He drove through a puddle and lost control of his car.
“I felt like I was in a movie, drifting. I went off and into the ditch. I was scared.” He said. “I thought my parents were going to kill me.”
Had this been any other night, real estate agent joe Nicholson might’ve gone to bed sooner.
“I thought I heard something that sounded like a crash,” Nicholson said.
He says accidents aren’t uncommon around the bend. Nicholson is no first responder.
“I’m just your average Joe,” he said.
But something told him to check things out.
Smooshed between trees and debris was a disoriented Ethan, who says his phone doesn’t typically have much of a charge by the end of the day.
“My dad texted me to charge it. It’s normally dead,” he said.
As the boy called his parents and police, Joe Nicholson noticed a spark.
“I saw flames coming from the car,” he explained.
The man helped Ethan squeeze out of the dented car and hobble to the other side of the road.
By the time Vanessa Pugh arrived, the car was ablaze.
Emergency crews stopped her from getting any closer to the burning car.
“I didn’t even know if my son was okay,” she remembered.
But the day proved miraculous.
“They said he been two inches closer he would’ve never walked away from that accident,” Pugh said.
The unusually charged phone, the positioning of the crash, and the thud that peaked Nicholson’s curiosity, all worked in Ethan’s favor.
On any other day, Nicholson would be your “average Joe.”
But that Wednesday, Vanessa Pugh would argue, he had wings:
“He’s our angel on earth,” she said.
Ethan is recovering from a minor ankle injury and The Pugh’s have already invited Nicholson to Ethan’s graduation next year.