Marines save elderly man in car accident
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION CHERRY POINT, N.C. — When Staff Sgt. Chavis P. Bowers began his morning commute Sept. 22, he had no idea just how important his combat lifesaver training would be that day.
http://www.usmc.mil/units/mcieast/mcascherrypoint/Pages/Marinessaveelderlymanincaraccident.aspx
10/1/2009 By Lance Cpl. Santiago G. Colon Jr. , Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point
But when Bowers, the maintenance chief for 2nd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion’s motor transport section, came to the scene of an accident about two miles east of Havelock on U.S. Highway 70, his first instinct was to employ those very skills.
Bowers said he was heading from his home in Morehead City to the air station when he saw a man in the middle of the highway directing traffic. In a nearby ditch, 72-year-old Marcus Innis was trapped in his overturned pickup truck. Bowers immediately pulled over and grabbed his first aid kit, which he said he always carries for such an emergency.
Lance Cpl. Aaron Besio, also a Cherry Point Marine and a passenger in the other vehicle involved in the accident, was the first person who attempted to rescue Innis. Bowers saw the young Marine, with a cast on his leg, lying next to the driver-side window trying to cut Innis out of the crumbled vehicle. Besio explained he was having trouble getting Innis out because he could not cut through the driver’s seatbelt.
“I looked in and saw the guy,” Bowers said. “He’s upside down, he’s bleeding, and I said, ‘I gotta get him out of here.’”
Bowers said he positioned himself near the truck’s crushed, narrow window and used a box cutter to free Innis from his seatbelt.
“I reached in, grabbed his shoulder restraint and cut that,” Bowers explained. “I had to reach a little bit further in to reach the lap belt. He had mud and stuff all over him, and his truck was torn up.”
All the while, Bowers said he tried to reassure the frightened victim.
“I told him, ‘On three, I’m going to cut it,’” Bowers said, recalling how he removed the final restraint. “‘One, two, three’ … I sliced right through it and he kind of fell to the roof of the truck.”
Chief Drummond Figg of the Newport Fire Department, who was on the scene soon after Bowers, agrees Innis was in grave danger.
“When I got there, the Marines had already cut him out,” Figg said. “The vehicle dug out a hole in the ditch and water had started to fill up in the cab.
“There was a real possibility if the Marine had not cut him out, he would have drowned,” Figg added.
Bowers said he then pulled Innis from the vehicle and began to assess his condition.
“Having completed the Combat Lifesaver Course, I was sitting there asking him a couple of questions, ‘Can you wiggle your toes for me? Does your back or anything feel tingly?’” Bowers said.
Around this time a nurse arrived on scene and began treatment. Bowers left shortly thereafter, but said the rush from the incident continued to linger.
“Afterward, the adrenaline was pumping,” Bowers said. “Later on in the day, right when I got home, it was more of a sobering moment.”
But Bowers added he does not consider himself a hero. He said he thinks any Marine would have reacted the same way.
“It’s kind of like when you play a sport -- you get into the zone,” Bowers said. “I got in there and I did everything I was supposed to do.
“I think that’s what Marines are known for doing, reacting to situations and resolving them,” he said. “I think that’s what sets us apart.”