Drew James Loftus helped to save Lynn E. Sauer from being struck by highway traffic, Encinitas, California, March 3, 2013. After a vehicular accident on an interstate highway at night, Sauer, 63, was trapped in her van, which had overturned onto its driver’s side across one of the four lanes of travel. Loftus, 22, security guard, was the passenger in an approaching vehicle that swerved to avoid the van. Stopping at the scene, he and the driver of the car responded to the van. Learning that it was occupied, Loftus mounted the passenger side and opened its front door as the other man went to the side of the van that faced oncoming traffic and used the light of his cellular telephone to alert approaching motorists. Loftus reached through the opened door, grasped Sauer, and pulled her from the vehicle. He then lowered her to the man on the highway, on which the speed limit was 65 m.p.h., and then ran with them to safety on the nearer shoulder. Moments later, the van was struck by an automobile, and both vehicles burst into flame, the van coming to rest atop the hood of the automobile. Loftus and the other man ran to the driver’s side of the automobile, where they secured the safety of its driver and then returned to the shoulder with her as flames on both vehicles grew. Sauer suffered injury to her neck, and she recovered.
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