One Arizona man - who is worthy of being called a hero - helped two toddlers escape from a burning car just seconds before it exploded.
Sam Heiler rescued a two-year-old and three-year-old girl from being burned alive in a car on the side of a remote highway on Arizona's Navajo reservation.
The 30-year-old and his wife, Melissa, who were heading to a Memorial Weekend getaway on Thursday evening, noticed that the car in front of them had caught fire.
The engine of the vehicle had set alight, and instead of driving on, Sam pulled over alongside the car.
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Melissa told Fox News that when the parents of the lit-up car got up out of the front seats and closed the doors, the couple were instantly locked out of the vehicle.
This meant that they couldn't open the backdoors to get their two children out of the car.
"The parents were freaking out, screaming and punching the windows with their bare hands, both the back windows in front of the babies," Melissa explained.
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The mother and father tried their best to smash open the windows but were unable to do so.
"They had about 20 more seconds until the fire spread from the engine block to the cab," she continued.
"The girls were screaming, the parents were screaming, my wife was screaming—it was bad.
"When the fire hit the fuel tank it made a legitimate fireball explosion.
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"Dad followed suit, but from the panic, attempted to throw rocks at the back windows where the girls would have been covered with glass and a heavy rock had it broken through.
"All the while, the flames had now spread to completely covering the front hood of the car, and the two and three-year old are screaming."
Hero Sam - who was quick to think on his feet - threw a rock through the front window to break the glass and unlock the doors from the inside.
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"Once the doors were open, Sam helped unbuckle them from their seatbelts, assisted the Mom and Dad in removing them from the car, and brought them up to where we pulled over about 30 yards up the road," Melissa added.
However, due to being in a remote area, there was no telephone network to contact emergency services.
As a solution, Sam used glow sticks he keeps in his car, to wave down another driver who called 911 when they regained cell service – about 25 miles further up the road.
Local police and firefighters eventually attended the scene to put out flames that spread from the car to a forest in Navajo County.
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"But, in that same instant, something came over him, and he felt like he had to stop and see if he could help. Divine intervention, no doubt in our minds," Melissa said.
Topics: US News
Anish Vij