Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Attitude of gratitude
Dania Beach man celebrates with rescuer
Man thanks Pembroke Pines officer who pulled him out of burning car.
Fequiere Pierre is a lucky man, and he’ll happily tell you that. Repeatedly.
When he became trapped inside his burning car, a police officer shattered a window and pulled Pierre through.
And the rescue didn’t come a moment too soon — the car burned down to its frame.
“[The officer] came in so fast, I can’t believe it,” said Pierre, 57. “He told me to get out, and I couldn’t.”
The drama began as Pierre drove along Pines Boulevard before sunrise Monday to his cleaning job at LongHorn Steakhouse. His Honda Civic hit a curb, the car battery became dislodged and smoke began to rise from beneath the sedan, a Pembroke Pines
Fire Rescue spokesman said.
Pembroke Pines Police Officer Luis Bermudez pulled up to the disabled car near Hiatus Road.
The Civic had lost power, the locks were frozen and Pierre was trapped inside.
“He had something in his car, he broke the window and he pulled my two arms, so he [could] get me out,” Pierre said.
That “something” was a LifeHammer, which Bermudez used to break the glass, cutting a finger as he lifted Pierre through the ragged opening and to safety, the police department said.
“I said thank God, and God bless him,” Pierre said. “I was so lucky. The car is gone.”
The smoking frame was all that was left of the car after firefighters extinguished the fierce blaze, photographs released by police showed.
“[Bermudez took] me away from the car,” Pierre said. “I was shaking.”
Pierre did not need to be treated by paramedics. As he was realizing what he had survived, his phone rang.
LongHorn Steakhouse manager Julian Giraldo usually meets Pierre each morning and they open the restaurant together. But not until after Giraldo starts his day at a cafe, with an eyeopener of Cuban coffee.
The cafe is next to a city fire station, and that Monday before dawn, firetrucks suddenly raced to Pines Boulevard. Police stopped traffic to allow the responders to pass.
“It was a huge thing, and I said to myself, ‘I hope everything is going to be OK,’” Giraldo said. “I called Mr. Pierre to tell him I’d be late because something was going on with the fire department. And he said, ‘It’s me!’ ”
“It seems funny right now, but it was something that could have been bad,” Giraldo said.
Police let Giraldo drive onto the closed roads to get to the burned Honda, where he found Pierre.
“He was kind of in a panic,” Giraldo said. “He could not believe what was going on.”
Pierre was in no shape to work and a colleague drove him home to Dania Beach, where he lives with his wife Mary and their three children, ages 19, 9 and 7.
“I followed up with him during the day until he told me, ‘Please stop calling me, I’m OK,’ ” Giraldo said.
Pierre showed up for work the next morning at 11900 Pines Blvd., to the restaurant he has cleaned for the past four years.
Having benefited from the good fortune that put Officer Bermudez in his path, he decided to test it.
“I bought a lottery ticket but I lost,” Pierre said.
But of course, he had already won the big prize. He’s still alive.
“Everybody said I have to go to church to pray, to give thanks” Pierre said. “If the police [officer] didn’t break the window, I could be in a hospital or die. I am so lucky.”
On Friday, LongHorn hosted a lunch for 10, so that Pierre could see Bermudez again and meet the officer’s family.
Pierre said he told Bermudez. “‘Thank you for a wonderful job you guys do.’ If there was not a police [officer] behind me, there was no way I can survive today. I had no way to get out. What could I do?”
Now, Pierre says, “I know to break the window.”
“If there was not a police [officer] behind me, there was no way I can survive today. I had no way to get out. What could I do?”
Fequiere Pierre