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Unsung Hero


In February of 2009, a woman was driving down a road around midnight in East Yorkshire, Great Britain, when she drove over black ice and skid out of control. Her car crashed through a fence and flipped over into a pond, with her still inside. Providentially, a taxi driver named James Brown noticed that there were headlights beaming from the water. The forty-one year-old man stopped to call the fire department, but then noticed someone inside. Even though the dispatcher urged Brown to stay out of the water, he saw that water was filling the car, and concluded she wouldn’t make it if she had to wait for a rescue team to arrive; so he made a choice. He put the phone down to jump in and found a woman inside banging on the window for help. Unable to open the door or window, he tried to comfort the woman inside as he flagged down another driver. Using a hammer given to him, Brown returned to smash the window and pull her from the car. He then carried her from the pond, put her in his car, and wrapped a blanket around her. She was taken to the hospital, where she was treated.

The twenty-eight year-old woman, named Caroline Saunders, was able to meet and thank her hero later. Fire personnel lauded the man for his rescue.

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