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Indiana nurse says 2 strangers saved her life after rollover crash

PENDLETON, Ind. — An Indiana nurse credited two strangers with saving her life when her car flipped after hitting a guardrail early Wednesday.

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Ericka Cosby was driving to work at her shift at a hospital when her cellphone fell off the car’s console, WXIN reported. Cosby said she attempted to grab the phone and immediately realized she had made a mistake, the television station reported.

“I didn’t even make it to pick it up before I was heading straight into the guardrail,” Cosby told WXIN. “The police officer said I rode down the guardrail for about 10 feet and flipped down the hill two to three times, not sure how many, but I landed upside down half in the creek and half on the grass.”

Cosby said she was stuck upside down and had no room to move because her air bag had inflated, the television station reported. While she had the OnStar service, Cosby could not reach the button and also was unable to reach her cellphone.

“I rolled the windows down and honked the horn for what felt like 10 minutes,” Cosby told WXIN. “I just kept thinking, ‘Am I gonna be stuck here? Because it’s a country road that doesn’t get traveled often.’”

Robert Wilson happened to be driving on the road when he noticed the lights of Cosby’s car.

“I don’t know that I would have seen her if her lights weren’t on,” Wilson told WXIN. “She was down the embankment. The lights are what caught my attention.

“I got closer and I noticed that they were tail-lights of a car, and so I just stopped on the bridge and ran down to the car.”

Cosby’s car began smoking, and at that point, another woman came to the vehicle to offer help, the television station reported. The biggest problem the two strangers faced was extricating Cosby from her seat belt, particularly since she was upside down in the car.

“I was very afraid if I unbuckled the seat belt, I was just going to land straight on my face because I couldn’t bend my knees to get them out anywhere,” Cosby told WXIN. “There was glass and so this man ... actually crawled into my car on all fours and acted like a tabletop for me.

“That man didn’t know me, and he literally let me fall onto him.”

As Wilson braced Cosby’s fall, the other woman unbuckled her seat belt. Seconds after escaping, Cosby’s car burst into flames, according to WXIN.

Cosby said she suffered a broken nose, a fractured orbital and a contusion on her heart. She also suffered a burn from the air bag but said things could have been a lot worse. She is hoping to leave the hospital soon but said she was grateful to the strangers who helped her out.

“They were my guardian angels, without a doubt,” Cosby told WXIN.

“I don’t feel like I’m a hero,” Wilson told the television station. “I don’t feel like I did anything that someone else wouldn’t do. I was brought up to help people.

“You would hope that anybody else would have done the same thing. I’d hate to live in a world where that’s not the case. I was just at the right place at the right time, I guess.”


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