"Do you remember what was going through your head?" Eyewitness News asked.
"I was going to die," said Gregory Jackson, victim.
No one knows how close he came to death except for his cousin and a stranger.
Gregory Jackson is heavily medicated, now recovering from cuts and burns.
He and his cousin had broken down on the Turnpike near Exit 9, waiting for his grandmother to come.
He didn't see the car speeding towards the shoulder.
"Next thing I know I was being pulled out of a burning car," Jackson said.
"Do you remember the car hitting you?" Eyewitness News asked.
"No I don't," Jackson replied.
"But you remember the flames?" Eyewitness News asked.
"I remember the flames," Jackson said.
Greg Jackson knows only that stranger's name, Doug.
"He probably was an angel sent by God because if it had not been for this gentleman and others who stopped to help, that, my God, we wouldn't be standing here talking to him, and we want to thank him from the bottom of our hearts," said Lynn Williams, a family member.
His cousin was treated and released.
Doctors at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center haven't said yet when this 29 year old semi-pro football player gets to go home.
That he has that option at all, he says is a gift from a man who was for a critical moment in his life a guardian angel.
"Thank you, thank you very much. I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for him," Jackson said.
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