Authorities are lauding a 16-year-old Long Beach resident as a hero after he rescued a woman from a car accident in Willmore late Tuesday night.
The Long Beach Fire Department (LBFD) got a call about a single occupant car accident in the area of Chester Place and Fairbanks Avenue at about 11:05PM, said LBFD spokesman Brian Fisk.
A woman driving a car on the Sixth Street onramp to the Northbound 710 Freeway crashed through a guardrail and continued down a 50-foot embankment. Her vehicle’s fall was broken by a tree and the car landed on its roof in the intersection of Chester Place and Fairbanks Avenue, Fisk said.
Sixteen-year-old Andrew Franco, who was on his computer at the time browsing Netflix, heard the crash and ran outside with no shoes on and, using a tool on his pocket knife to break the driver’s side window, freed the victim from the car. The boy then dragged her body 30 feet away from the accident.
“He got there immediately because it was right out front of his place,” Fisk said.
Franco, who said he plans to join the Marine Corps after high school and eventually become a police officer, said he did not consider himself a hero.
“I just had to get down there as quick as possible to see if I could help that person,” he told the Long Beach Post. “It feels good knowing I helped someone. I was just really happy she was okay.”
Fisk said LBFD personnel arrived six minutes after the boy did, and the woman was transported to an area trauma hospital due to mechanisms of the injury. She suffered minor injuries, and the vehicle was severely damaged.
Andrew said this was not the first time he had to help a car accident victim in that area. About a week prior, he said, a man’s car also flew off the side of the freeway and landed in the same intersection as Tuesday night’s incident. Andrew also rushed down to that scene, but the man was not hurt, he said.
Fisk confirmed this incident took place on the night of January 6 around the same location, and the man who crashed his vehicle walked away with no injuries in the unreported incident.
Andrew said he wants to encourage the city to make the area safer for traffic.
“I want the city to know that there’s no guardrail on the Sixth Street onramp to the Northbound 710 Freeway,” he said. “Something needs to be done about that because this is the second time in a week. There’s a grass patch, and there’s a guardrail before the grass patch but nothing to block the grass patch, so it’s just open. That’s where cars usually go off.”
The cause of Tuesday night’s crash is under investigation, and no further details are currently available. We will update this story as we learn more.