Thursday, March 4, 2010

Everday CT Tow Hero

Kudos to 35-year-old Adam Peplau, a driver for Mid-Town Auto Body for his rescue of a CT woman who rolled her SUV while avoiding another vehicle!
Here's the story from the Stanford Advocate:

BRIDGEPORT ---- Adam Peplau, a tow truck driver for Mid-Town Auto Body, was heading to Shelton on Wednesday morning for what he expected to be a routine job, when things changed dramatically.

The 35-year-old Peplau, a Bridgeport resident, was driving north on the Route 8/25 connector, coming up on the Boston Avenue exit, when the sport-utility vehicle in front of him swerved to avoid a speeding car.

The woman driver "cut the wheel pretty hard to the right and rolled her SUV about three times," he said. "She wound up off to the side on that construction site where a State Police cruiser is usually parked. If he had been there, it would have been pretty ugly."

Peplau pulled over, hopped out of his truck and immediately looked inside the overturned Honda SUV. The SUV came to rest on its passenger side, and the driver, Christin Valdes, 22, of Stamford, was "strung up" by her safety belt.

"She told me that she was all right," he said. "I ran back to the truck to get my gloves and pulled off the cracked windshield."

Peplau then told Valdes to brace herself so she wouldn't fall when he cut the safety belt. Then, he helped her out of the crippled vehicle. By then, emergency vehicles arrived to whisk her off to the emergency room of Bridgeport Hospital, where she was treated for a few bumps and bruises, and released, police said.

"I've had training for taking care of rollovers, but only for after the people in the car have been rescued," he said, adding that his self-taught survival training came in handy to deal with the emergency.

"You have to be able to deal with what life throws at you," he said. "If my car flipped over and I was in the middle of nowhere, I have the mental training, and I've read enough, too, to deal with it myself."

He said that people should be better prepared to handle an emergency like Wednesday's traffic mishap.

"You have to prepare for the worst," he said. "I always carry an extra charged battery for my cell phone and I always have a set of knives. I also have a first-aid kit that's bigger than the one you'd get at Wal-Mart."

His advice for motorists?

"When you get into an accident, call 911, not Triple-A," he said. "A lot of people are so upset after a crash that they call for a tow truck when they really need a police response and an ambulance."

As for the flipped-over SUV, he said that his boss at Mid-Town swung by with another tow truck to remove it from the side of the highway.

And the car that Peplau was supposed to fetch in Shelton?

"They sent another driver to get that one," he said. "It's been a crazy day."

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