A Burnham-On-Sea man who was travelling to hospital with his partner for the birth of their baby on Tuesday morning (July 19th) managed to rescue a shaken driver after an M5 crash.
Rob Hearle was on his way to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton when he saw a collision between a lorry and a van on the approach to junction 25, causing the van to flip.
Rob dashed from his vehicle to check if the van driver was hurt and managed to pull him out of the damaged vehicle.
He said: “I was on the way to the hospital with my partner, Hollie, around 7.20am. She was having a C-section later in the day to deliver our fourth little boy.”
“We were just coming off at the exit slip for junction 25 when we saw the crash. The van completely flipped him over.”
Rob stopped his own car and jumped out – hoping the van driver was still alive. He says the rear of the vehicle had “caved in” and had come to rest on its side.
“When I looked through the window the bloke was crumpled up down at the very bottom so I told Hollie to ring the police and the ambulance. He looked completely out of it and I was fearing the worst. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to wrench the door open and call out to him.”
“Eventually he came round and he started saying ‘where am I? where am I?’. He was pretty shaken up. Then when he realised what had happened, he said ‘help me, please help me’.”
“I managed to grab one of his arms and pulled him out. I couldn’t believe he was okay, I honestly thought he was going to be dead,” Rob says.
He helped the man to the side of his van and told him to “get his breath back”. By that time, a crowd had gathered around them.
“I explained to him that Hollie and I had to rush on, or we would miss our appointment. He seemed to be in good hands and the ambulance was on its way. He’s probably in the same hospital as us now,” Rob said.
He later told Burnham-On-Sea.com that they had welcomed the arrival of their new baby boy, Freddie Hearle, later in the day.
