‘Right thing to do’: Man sacrifices truck to save unconscious driver on highway

LAKEWOOD, Colo. ( KDVR ) — A good Samaritan rescued a woman by stopping her out-of-control vehicle in a suburb of Denver on Friday, Sept. 6.

The commute turned into a scary situation for drivers on westbound 6th Avenue in Lakewood, where Ryan Myrick stepped in to help resolve the situation.

“Just after Sheridan, I saw a vehicle that swerved in front of me,” Myrick told Nexstar’s KDVR. “They swerved all the way over and hit the median, the dividing median. Then bounced up and over and then back to the wall of the right-hand side of westbound.”

He realized the driver was unconscious behind the wheel.

“The driver was completely passed out hunched over the passenger seat still going forward, no hands on the wheel, no nothing,” said Myrick.

With traffic moving at about 30 mph, he made a split-second decision to sacrifice his pickup truck to stop the driver.

“I got in front of her, looked behind me to make sure there was nobody else behind me,” Myrick said. “I stopped so she could hit me. So, I let her vehicle impact me to stop her from going forward.”

He then jumped out of his 15-year-old Dodge Ram truck and grabbed a floor jack to break out the windows and turn off the unconscious woman’s vehicle ignition.

Luckily, an off-duty police officer was nearby to help shut off the ignition. A nurse, also sitting in traffic, jumped out to help, Myrick said.

“She was like, ‘It looks like she had a seizure so don’t touch her,'” said Myrick. “She was going to end up off the Wadsworth off-ramp and just went straight. She would have went down that hill into oncoming traffic.”

Myrick’s truck suffered bumper damage.

“The damage that was done on my truck is nothing compared to the lives that would have been taken or could’ve been taken if I didn’t do what I did. I would have done it again in a brand-new truck,” Myrick said.

Although he doesn’t want to call himself a hero for his quick thinking, he encourages others to jump in when they see something isn’t right.

“This is something I would have done for anyone,” said Myrick. “I’m not out looking for heroism. Everyone says I’m a hero and it doesn’t feel like heroism. … It was just the right thing to do. “

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