US Air Force Academy cadets help woman trapped in car after crash

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KXRM) — Three cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) are being praised for their compassion and leadership skills after they jumped into action to help direct traffic and free a driver trapped in her car following a rollover crash.

According to USAFA , Cadets 1st Class Nicole Hedges and Tobias Temple and Cadet 2nd Class Wyatt Bell were returning to the Academy around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 7 after grabbing a bite to eat, when they spotted an overturned car on an off-ramp from Interstate 25.

USAFA said no one else appeared to have stopped to check on the car and driver, so the cadets immediately pulled over to help.

Hedges directed traffic while her fellow cadets kicked in the driver’s side window, finding the woman bloodied and injured. The cadets removed the woman’s seatbelt and helped her from her car, at which point they noticed she had cuts to her hands from broken glass, and was shaken up from the crash.

“We could tell that she was almost hysterical and panicked when we got her out of the car,” said Hedges, a Geospatial Science major who will be a U.S. Air Force weather and environmental science officer. “She just wanted to grab onto somebody when she realized that she was still alive. We just kept telling her, ‘It’s OK. You’re OK,’ trying to console her.”

After freeing the driver, a passerby called an ambulance and the cadets waited with the woman for first responders to arrive.

“On behalf of the command teams of all these cadets, I am extremely proud of their actions that night,” said Col. Aarti Puri, Cadet Group 1 commander. “By having the courage to do what was right in that moment and applying their training, possibly putting themselves in harm’s way in the service of others, they clearly demonstrated the qualities we wish to instill in our future officers. These cadets serve as a shining example to us all of what it means to be a leader of character.”

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