It’s Finest to rescue

AN OFF-DUTY NYPD officer’s skill with a tourniquet helped save the life of a truck driver who nearly severed his leg in a Peekskill crash Thursday morning.

Christopher Vega came across the gruesome scene at about 10 a.m., while he was driving home from Camp Smith in Cortlandt.

A driver lost control of his box truck on a snow-covered stretch of Main St., and the crushed cab pinned the 34-year-old driver inside. The driver’s left leg was nearly torn off near the ankle.

“The leg was being held on by the tendons,” Vega said. “I applied the tourniquet about six inches above his left knee.”

The man had lost a lot of blood, so Vega started talking to him to help keep fight.

The driver told Vega his name, and that he had three children. Vega, a Bronx resident and Marine with 12 years in the NYPD, has children of his own, so he could relate. “Tapping into something that would make him fight for his family — who doesn’t want to fight for his family?” Vega said.

Another motorist on the Long Island Expressway got a different kind of assist from cops — in the form of a push from a Suffolk County police SUV.