Robert Paul Myers helped to save Amanda L. Cook from burning, Pasadena, Texas, August 7, 2000. Amanda, 16, was trapped in the front passenger seat of a two-door automobile after a highway accident in which the car overturned and caught fire. Myers, 44, police officer, responded to the scene. Unable to open the passenger door of the badly damaged car, he had several men at the scene lift the rear end of the car to provide him greater access to the passenger door’s window opening. The men then holding the rear of the burning car off the pavement, Myers crawled through the window and grasped Amanda. Unable to free her, he withdrew from the car for a knife. One handed to him, Myers re-entered the vehicle through the window, despite flames spreading on the car’s underside, and cut Amanda’s safety belt, freeing her. He then grasped Amanda and, helped by others, pulled her from the vehicle and carried her away. Flames engulfed the car less than a minute later. Amanda required extensive hospitalization for treatment of severe injuries, and she recovered. The driver of the car died that day of her injuries. Myers sustained a laceration to his right thumb, from which he recovered, and he singed the hair on an arm.
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