Woodmere resident rescues two men from flaming one-car crash

Woodmere resident Alan Fein was unloading luggage after arriving home from a business trip when he heard a loud crash come from the intersection of Elm Street and Broadway, where a vehicle crashed into a utility pole and split it in half at 12:40 a.m. on Dec 9.

He called 911 to report the crash and walked to the near street corner, noticing the mess ahead of him: “There was so much debris in the street, I assumed it was two cars, although it wasn’t,” Fein said.

A man, 43, the passenger, sat outside of the wrecked blue 2018 blue Mercedes sport utility vehicle, which was flaming from the hood. Fein said the man’s speech was incoherent and  he appeared to be hurt.

At the opposite side of the car, the driver’s side door was opened, and Fein saw the seatbelt moving, which indicated to him that someone was still in the driver’s seat. “To me, the most thankful part was that the door was open,” he said. “The guy was, I guess, aware enough to open up his driver’s side door, he was just in too much pain to get out. He couldn’t put his feet on the ground. The only way I got him out was to let him fall to the ground.”

The driver, Willie Bryant, 54, of Beach Street, Far Rockaway, was wrapped in a disconnected seatbelt and surrounded by deployed airbags. Bryant suffered two broken ankles, which Fein described as mangled and facing the wrong way.

Fein untangled Bryant from the seatbelt and removed the deployed airbags from obstructing the rescue. He used Bryant’s winter coat to yank him out of the vehicle and drag him across the driveway, distancing him from the flames in case a larger and more dangerous fiery explosion was to occur.

“My mind is very analytical,” Fein said, “all I was doing was calculating time, how far the fire is going to go and how much time do we have to get him away from there.”

He recorded the incident before approaching the car. “I’m a lawyer so I figured, you never know,” Fein said. “I pulled him out and I realized [afterwards that] my phone was still recording in my pocket — I guess I didn’t have the time or the inclination to shut it off.”

In the iPhone video, you hear Bryant howling in agony while Fein convinces Bryant to let him help. “We got to get out of here come on,” Fein says, along with phrases like “I know it hurts” and “I’ll pull you,” to which Bryant replies: “pull me” and “thank you buddy”.

The pole was “sparking almost like a transformer,” Fein said, comparing the damage to a magic trick: “you know that trick with the guy in the box, the head is on one side, the feet on the other side and nothing in between — that’s what it looked like.”

First responders arrived and secured the scene to limit further damage of nearby homes and oncoming traffic. Multiple fire departments extinguished the car fire. Fein estimated the whole incident took about 10 minutes.

Both men were taken to local hospitals, where Bryant was treated for his broken ankles and the passenger for a broken collarbone and cracked ribs.

Bryant is charged with third-degree driving while intoxicated, third-degree assault and driving a motor vehicle without a proper license.  He was arraigned on Dec. 13 and released on his own recognizance. No attorney was listed. 

“You can’t watch somebody just sit there in a car and die because you’re afraid to pull them out,” Fein said, adding that “the world today is so negative, so there should be stories where people step up and help out a fellow man.”

He described the incident as “emotionally heavy” and credited his selflessness to his faith: “Being an Orthodox Jew I think it shows well on us,” Fein said, “and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

Fein hopes that every person can see one and other in a favorable light and be there to help each other out. Children are “all we leave behind,” said of the father of six, who has 15 grandchildren,  “so it’s important that they get lessons like this.”