Good Samaritan talks about saving NJ teen from fiery wreck

ROCKAWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (WABC) -- A group of Good Samaritans pulled a teenage girl from a fiery wreck in New Jersey.

The 17-year-old girl survived the car wreck Tuesday and was pulled to safety just moments before the car went up in flames.

David Mannherz was driving with his wife Meriden Road in Rockaway Township when they saw the accident and jumped out to help another Good Samaritan.

"She was trying to open the door. We got the door open, bent it back and we saw that the steering wheel and the engine had the girl pinned against the back of her seat," Mannherz said.

David's wife is an operating room nurse and she jumped in the back seat to try to support the victim's neck, but they knew time was short.

"We realized from the smell that there was a fire somewhere, and then we look down and we saw that there was fuel on fire dripping into the wheel well," Mannherz said. "I grabbed her by the arms, my wife grabbed one of her legs, another lady trying to hold the door grabbed her other leg and we pulled her out."

And that's when David, who once worked as a dispatcher, realized no one had called 911, so he made the call.

"In the matter of time I hung up with 911, I looked up and the entire inside of the car was up in flames," Mannherz said.

The Good Samaritans, by now five people strong, moved the victim to a safe area.

She was injured and in shock.

Emergency crews arrived quickly, but by then the fuel tank had already blown.

David knows that had it not been for all those Good Samaritans, that 17-year-old girl would not have survived.

"She had to come out of that car, there was no way that we could have left her in that car. It would have been a whole other headline, a whole other news story," Mannherz said.