‘It would have been a tragedy,’ rescuer says

Passersby pull family from burning car before it explodes

Minutes before a burning car exploded on the Queensway Friday night, Yasser Alshunaif heard the frantic cries of the 12-year-old boy trapped in the back seat.

“His leg was stuck with the seatbelt,” Alshunaif said. “He said, ‘Please help me. Pull me! Pull me!’ ”

The boy’s father and two of his siblings had already been pulled from the wreckage with the help of other passersby, one of whom smashed a window with his boot and released the front seat.

Alshunaif and his friend pried the back door open and freed the boy from the flaming car.

Alshunaif had just left a ceremony for students from Saudi Arabia and was dressed in a traditional white floorlength garment, without a jacket, when he noticed the crash near the Nicholas Street eastbound off-ramp about 9:30 p.m.

The car smashed into a culvert after it was hit by another vehicle, and the father and children were trapped.

A man’s voice rang out in the dark, warning Alshunaif to run from the burning car. Instead, he ran toward it.

“I was shocked,” he said. “How do you want me to run away when a child was stuck there?”

After the rescue, Alshunaif hustled back to his car to escape the cold and didn’t even know about the explosion until he read about it the next day.

A Long Sault volunteer firefighter, who also helped with the rescue, described the dramatic scene before the explosion. “It was close. Very, very close,” said Dan Regnier, who has worked as a volunteer firefighter for two years. “It was one of those decisions where we kind of put ourselves at risk in the environment, but I really didn’t have a choice.”

Regnier, 35, was driving home from his Ottawa job in the financial industry when he saw the burning car. He pulled over, ran across the highway and worked to free the family. The father and daughter were not fully conscious, Regnier said. He pried the driver’s door open and pulled the father from the car with the help of some other men. The daughter in the front passenger seat and a second child were also pulled from the driver’s door, Regnier said.

But the 12-year-old boy was still trapped inside the burning vehicle.

“It seemed like forever, but it was not that long,” Regnier said.

“It was literally two to three seconds and we would have watched the kid burn. It would have been a tragedy.”

The driver of the second vehicle had some bruising on his face, but he was out and walking around when police, firefighters and police arrived and took over from the passersby.

The father was assessed by paramedics for minor burns to his hand, but refused to go to the hospital.

His children were uninjured.

“Saving those people was a great feeling,” Regnier said. “Probably the most rewarding moment of my life.”