Noah Jackson was heading to work when his SUV collided with a minivan near Battle Ground Monday afternoon, but he wasn’t so banged up he couldn’t join two others at the scene in pulling an injured woman from the burning minivan.
Jackson, 19, of Battle Ground, was actually driving his mother’s Ford Escape, he said. His car was out of commission for some repairs.
He was heading south on Northeast 50th Avenue when a woman driving a Dodge Caravan reportedly rolled into the intersection at Northeast 239th Street.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Monday its preliminary investigation found the minivan driver didn’t stop, leading to the crash.
Sheriff’s office spokesman Sgt. Brent Waddell said Tuesday the crash was still under investigation. The sheriff’s office did not identify the driver of the minivan.
Jackson said he tried to swerve out of the way, but he still struck the driver’s side of the van, toward the hood. The impact felt like it sent his SUV skidding sideways, he said, then into a front flip and onto its top.
Jackson recalled being a little dazed at first, then landing upside-down after unbuckling his seat belt.
“How am I not hurt?” he recalled thinking.
After some work, he was able to get his door open and crawl out from the wreckage. He walked to the minivan and found the driver awake, but not really responsive, inside.
There was a small fire on the hood of her car, he said.
The minivan door wouldn’t readily open, but the angle of the crash warped the door just right so he could get to the lock.
“Her door was kind of bent open,” he said. “It was, like, barely open enough to where I could just pull and pop the lock.”
Right as he got the door open, a woman, presumably a neighbor, he said, ran up. She said she was a nurse, to Jackson’s relief.
“Right when I got the door open she was running up,” he said.
Shortly after, another man arrived to help, and the three dragged the woman away from the minivan.
“It happened so fast,” he said. “By the time we had her, actually getting dragged away, it was like full-on flames.”
Once they got her away, he let go and went to lay down on some grass. At that point, his back was hurting too much to help more, he said.
“I didn’t, like, pull her out of the car. I couldn’t have. It was a group thing,” he said.
He has some cuts and scrapes, and is generally pretty sore all over, but he said he is expected to heal with some rest.
Jackson works as a contracted medical scribe in the emergency department at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, the same hospital he was rushed to following the crash.
Getting treatment from his coworkers was kind of a treat, he said.
“The same doctor I was going to work for was the doctor that saw me,” he said. “The first thing he says to me — he like, whispers in my ear — ‘You’re late.'”
His doctor had him take a few days off.
His mom’s Ford Escape, he said, didn’t make it.
“It’s totaled. Completely destroyed.”
