Chris Davis helps at scene of crash on B-W Parkway
Mike Soukup was driving south Monday afternoon on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway whenhesawastream of brake lights and then a pillar of smoke.
He saw a pickup truck on its side. One person had been thrown from the vehicle, he said, and another was pinned beneath it. He noticed a pool of gasoline forming.
Soukup, 55, pulled over where he saw a man waving for assistance. Others joined them and they were able to right the truck.
Afterward, he turned to the man next to him, the one who was the first on the scene and helping to attend to the man ejected from the truck. It was Orioles infielder Chris Davis.
“I turned to high-five the guy for a good job done getting this truck up, and I thought to myself, ‘Man, that looks like Chris Davis,’ ” Soukup said.
Soukup noticed his black shoes with orange stitching. He asked whether he was indeed Davis, who is serving a 25-game suspension for a second failed drug test for an amphetamine he later revealed was Adderall. Davis hasn’t responded to requests for comment since the suspension was announced Friday.
“When I said, ‘Chris?’ and he said, ‘Yeah,’ back, he did it as if I was saying it to my best friend Bob,” Soukup said. “He was truly sincere when he said he appreciated when I told him I thought he basically got screwed over. He was a real nice guy. He talked to everybody. He talked to the EMTs.
“He was the first guy there. I just didn’t realize it. HewastheguyI sawrunning across the street to help the guy out of the truck, and he was the guy who, when I pulled over, was waving to me saying, ‘Come on, hurry up, we’ve got to get this truck up.’ He was the first person on the scene.”
Ian Brennan, a spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department, said city units — including three medics and a fire engine, truck and squad under the direction of an EMSbattalion chief — were dispatched to the scene beginning at 1:44 p.m. Monday for a rescue assignment.
The medic units took three people to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Another patient was transported to Shock Trauma by an Anne Arundel County medic unit, Brennan said.
Lt. Russ Davies of the Anne Arundel Fire Department said a county medical unit responded about 1:52 p.m. Monday to a city request for help at the scene of an overturned vehicle on southbound Interstate 295 near the Westport exit, where one person had been ejected and three others were injured.
An Anne Arundel unit took a 61-year-old man to Shock Trauma with serious injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Davies said.
“It was news to us,” he said, of hearing about Davis’ involvement.
Soukup, a musician who lives in Severn, said he resisted the urge to ask Davis for his autograph.
“I asked myself whether I should ask him for his autograph, and I thought, ‘No, it would be too tacky. With everything going on with the poor man, this is enough.’ I’ll just let it go and maybe I’ll meet him some other time and get his autograph.
“He’s pretty much my favorite Oriole. He seems to be a real nice humble guy who just happens to hit a ball really far. I was supposed to make more stops on my way home, but I thought, ‘I can’t. I’ve got to go home and tell my wife about this.’ ”