TLA48_AllPages

ANGELS, FROM PAGE 41
CHRISTOPHER LLOYD
WILLIAM “BILL” McNAMEE
“There were other vehicles pulling up and
watching, taking pictures, but not getting out
to help,” Lloyd shared. Without a moment
to spare, he safely pulled over and called
911, then grabbed his fire extinguisher and
jumped out of his cab.
“I couldn’t get the flames out completely,”
he recalled, adding that he tried the car’s
doors but found them locked. “I ran back to
the truck for a winch bar and my 10-pound
hazmat extinguisher to finish putting the fire
out and to bust out the windows.”
The car’s cabin was filled with smoke.
Other people now stopped to help. Lloyd
found the female driver pinned behind the
wheel.
“She was unresponsive, but breathing,”
he said. “The male passenger ended up in
the back seat and was in pretty bad shape.
I checked and found a pulse, and he was
breathing.” He directed another person to
hold the man’s neck still and not to move
him. Lloyd said that since the fire was extinguished,
that was the safest thing to do until
emergency responders could arrive.
The driver and passenger were both in
critical condition and were transported for
medical care. Lloyd later learned that he was
the only one who called 911. A police officer
told him the pair would have burned alive if it
were not for him.
“That wasn’t my normal run that night,”
said Lloyd. “The driver that usually takes that
run had broken down. The dispatcher called
and asked if I could take it. I was delayed by
over an hour, but somehow it all lined up for
me to be there at that precise moment in time
to hopefully save their lives.” He hasn’t been
able to get an update on their condition but
said “I hope the best for them.”
Lloyd shared that he became a volunteer
firefighter at the age of 16 and went to a firefighting
academy. He later joined the U.S.
Coast Guard. “The night of the fire, it all came
flooding back … how to manage a scene,”
he said. “Just like it was yesterday.”
WILLIAM “BILL” McNAMEE
William “Bill” McNamee, who lives in
Christopher, Illinois, and drives for Carbon
Express of Wharton, New Jersey, is being
honored for stopping to help a seriously
injured girl after her family’s vehicle was
involved in a head-on collision. This is the
second time McNamee has been named a
Highway Angel.
McNamee was traveling east on I-44
near Marshfield, Missouri, just before
5 p.m. on September 10, 2020, when he
noticed traffic was slowing up ahead. An
eastbound SUV had driven off the road,
broken through the cable barriers in the
median, and entered the westbound lanes,
where it crashed head-on into another vehicle.
Other drivers had already stopped to
help. Without hesitation, McNamee pulled
over and rushed to the scene.
“Someone was getting a toddler in a car
seat out of the backseat, and two people
were pulling a uniformed officer out of
the driver’s seat,” he recalled. Someone
had laid a little girl on top of the collapsed
cable barrier on the grass, but no one was
tending to her, McNamee recalled. He ran
over to the girl, who appeared to be around
7 years old, and began assessing her injuries.
McNamee, a first responder with his
local fire department, shared that she was
severely wounded.
“She was unresponsive and was having
trouble breathing,” he said. Someone handed
him a small Army medic kit. He opened the
girl’s shirt revealing chest injuries too massive
to allow him to perform CPR.
“I was praying for her,” he said. “I was
telling her to keep breathing.” Another person
was with the girl’s father, an off-duty
sheriff’s deputy, whom he later learned had
“
That wasn’t my
normal run that night. The
driver that usually takes
that run had broken down.
The dispatcher called and
asked if I could take it. I
was delayed by over an
hour, but somehow it all
lined up for me to be there
at that precise moment in
time to hopefully save
their lives.”
— Christopher Lloyd, driver for
Airline Transportation Specialists and
TCA Highway Angel
been gravely injured. “He was calling out
to his daughter that ‘Daddy’s here. Everything’s
gonna be okay.’ I kept telling her
she was going to be okay, that help was
coming, and to listen for the sirens,” added
McNamee.
Meanwhile, a nurse stopped to help. “She
stabilized the girl’s neck, and we got her
ready for emergency transport,” he shared
with TCA.
McNamee is uncertain what happened to
the other driver. “He just stayed in his vehicle.
Apparently, he was traveling across the
country.”
The other driver passed a breathalyzer
and chemical test. He also was transported
to the hospital. McNamee learned the offduty
deputy, just 26 years old, who had
also sustained massive chest trauma, did
not survive. He added that the family was
extricated from the car because those first
on the scene saw smoke and were worried
about a fire. However, the “smoke” was
dust from the airbags.
“They were everyday citizens (trying to
do the right thing),” McNamee said, noting
that he’s proud of the four other truck
drivers and the nurse who stopped to help
the family.
“I don’t know who they were but trucking
still has some knights of the road,” he
42 TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY | WWW.TRUCKLOAD.ORG TCA MAY/JUNE 2021