Woman Rescued After Car Bursts Into Flames
Published: September 21, 2006
Sometimes you have bad luck. On another day, fate gives you a break. Tuesday morning, 20-year-old Karrisa Stoltz of Plainfield had the worst luck of her life. Then the best.
At 8:06 a.m., Stoltz’s white Pontiac careened across Chicago Road after she lost consciousness in a 30 mph zone near Grant Street. As she slumped over the steering wheel, the car knocked over a mailbox and then smacked into the garage of a home at 267 Chicago Road.
Although Stoltz was apparently unconscious, she had crossed oncoming traffic, rolled across the lawn and didn’t even hit the garage hard enough to deploy her car’s air bags. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt at the time, according witnesses.
But then her bad streak began. Stoltz’s car hit the home, rupturing the gas line and causing the car to burst into flames.
Budd Wormley had stopped in the road to avoid Stoltz’s car. “I called 911, but there were immediate flames,” said Wormley, a real estate agent on his way to an apartment he is rehabbing down the street. “I couldn’t wait for the fire department — she would have burned up. I said a prayer and said I’m going to get this girl out. I figured as long as I could stand it, I would give it a try.”
Todd Winders, a maintenance worker for the Oswego School District, also watched the car shoot across the road. “Right away, I thought the car was going to blow up,” he said.
Wormley grabbed the mailbox to smash the passenger window of the car, but it wouldn’t shatter. Suddenly, Winders showed up with a pipe wrench he was carrying in his truck. After the window was broken, Wormley had to reach across the car to grab Stoltz and pull her out.
Wormley and two neighbors got Stoltz out of the car and carried her to the curb, where she started to regain consciousness. She was treated and released from Rush-Copley Medical Center Tuesday and charged with driving without insurance, police said.
Officials said alcohol was not involved, and that Stoltz had lost consciousness because of a medical condition. And somehow, no one was seriously injured.
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