‘Selfless’: Hialeah EMT killed in a Fort Lauderdale highway crash died offering help
Yanaisa Pulido put the welfare of others before hers. Now, her family needs others to help after she was killed in a six-car crash in Fort Lauderdale while aiding people stranded on Interstate 95 over the weekend.
Those who knew her say the 23-year-old Hialeah paramedic died doing what she did best: helping others when they needed it most.
Leannie Pulido, one of her six siblings and a dispatcher at the same EMS company where her sister worked, said the paramedic was dedicated to helping everyone, on the job or not.
“She was always looking out for others before herself,” her 18-year-old sister said.
How did the crash unfold on I-95?
Around 4 a.m. Sunday, Pulido was behind the wheel of a black Kia Forte sedan going south on I-95 — heading home after a 12-hour shift — when she stopped in one of the center lanes and got out of her car to help two other drivers involved in a crash, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
However, as a 41-yearold Doral man driving a silver Cadillac ATS sedan began to slow down to avoid crashing into the back of Pulido’s car, a 19-year-old Pembroke Pines woman in a black Lexus IS300 crashed into the rear of his car.
The impact caused the man’s sedan, with a 34year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy as passengers, to rotate as it moved forward — throwing Pulido and smashing the left side of her car.
Moments later, the driver behind the wheel of a sixth vehicle crashed into one of the cars involved in the first accident, also hitting a concrete barrier wall and the silver Cadillac.
The man driving the Cadillac was critically injured, while his passengers were injured to a
lesser extent, Florida troopers said. The woman driving the black Lexus and the two drivers involved in the first crash were not hurt. Pulido died on the highway.
Pulido believed that her calling was to be a paramedic, said Victor Rigo, the general manager of Miami-Dade Ambulance, where she worked until Sunday.
After graduating from the Hialeah Fire Cadet program in 2019, Pulido worked for the EMS company as she completed her studies. Last year, she was deployed to areas affected by Category 4 Hurricane Idalia.
“She took countless weeks from home to assist others up north, and she did it all with a smile and joy in her heart,”
Rigo said. “She was selfless, always put others before herself.”
At her home, Pulido would make sure others were happy even if she was not, her sister said.
“Whenever she was around, it would feel like all my troubles would lift up and go away,” she said.
The Pulido family is asking South Floridians to lend a hand in covering Leannie’s funeral costs.
And it seems that the plea is being heard.
More than $30,000 had been raised to pay for Pulido’s funeral as of Tuesday afternoon.