Bystanders Facts

A motorcyclist slid underneath a burning BMW near Utah State University. The first bystanders tried to lift the 4,000-pound vehicle but couldn't budge it. Then more strangers joined - construction workers in hard hats, students with backpacks, a man in a suit - until a dozen people lifted the burning car off the ground while one man dragged the unconscious 21-year-old to safety.

A woman drove her SUV into the water behind a Virginia Beach seafood restaurant. The doors wouldn't open. Strangers smashed the windows as it sank. One of them was Jeremy Way - a 17-year Navy rescue swimmer who happened to be eating lunch nearby. He put her in a cross-chest carry and swam her to safety. The SUV vanished moments later.

Eight-year-old Olivia Heid and her 4-year-old brother RJ sled off a ridge and vanish into a frozen New Jersey pond. Kieran Foley, 14, loses a boot in the mud and keeps going barefoot. His four friends link arms behind him on the ice. One by one, he hands both kids down the chain to shore.

A 25-year-old woman was pinned face-down under a Mercedes-Benz at a Manhattan intersection. The rear tire was on her back. Within seconds, nearly a dozen strangers sprinted over and tilted the 2-ton SUV onto two wheels to free her. She crawled out with no broken bones. New Yorkers, apparently.

When a crash on I-30 in Fort Worth ejected a 1-year-old girl and her mother and pinned the baby under the overturned SUV, 20-30 strangers and two police officers lifted the vehicle together. Sgt. Ryan Nichols started CPR on the unresponsive infant while Officer Edwin Bounds cleared her airway. She came back - first a hum, then a cry. Both survived.

When a gray SUV was T-boned and flipped onto its side at a busy Daytona Beach intersection in March 2024, eight strangers - including Army Iraq war veteran Amy Ridgely - ran over and rocked it back onto its wheels in under 60 seconds. The whole rescue was caught on a traffic camera, and Daytona Beach Police called it the spirit of Daytona Beach.

When a speeding GMC truck crashed through a bridge fence and plunged upside down into Utah's Jordan River in 2014, Leo Montoya Jr. was the first person to jump in - then shouted at frozen bystanders until more than a dozen strangers waded in beside him. Together they physically flipped the submerged vehicle upright, held one boy's head above water, and got all three trapped teenagers out alive.

A 58-year-old man was pinned face-down under a car at a Somerville, Massachusetts intersection. Somerville police officers and nearby construction workers rushed over and physically lifted the vehicle - rolling it onto two wheels and pushing it back 10 feet - to free him. He was conscious and speaking when paramedics took him to Mass General.