Newly released bodycam and dashcam footage captures the moment New Jersey officers pulled an unconscious driver from a burning car after it erupted in flames along a highway in South Brunswick.
According to police, officers were directed to the crash after cellphones inside the vehicle automatically contacted 911.
“When you have an iPhone, if it comes to a sudden stop, it’ll automatically make a call to a 911 center saying possible collision,” South Brunswick Police Department Deputy Chief Jim Ryan says. “That alert indicated there was likely a crash nearby. South Brunswick officers were close, and their actions saved this young man’s life.”
Ryan explains that the driver had two phones in the car. “The driver had both his iPhone and his friend’s iPhone, so they got two activations,” he says. “Both phones detected the rapid deceleration and sent notifications to the police.”
According to WABC, 26-year-old Safwan Islam experienced a medical episode shortly before the Nov. 9 crash on Route 27 in Franklin Township.
South Brunswick Police Department officers Yash Shroff and Thomas Sites were the first to arrive and managed to pull Islam from the burning vehicle.
“I saw the driver inside,” Shroff told WABC. “He was unconscious and bleeding heavily from the head. Within minutes, the car started smoking.”
“I grabbed the breacher tool from the back of my car and smashed both the back and the front driver-side window,” Officer Thomas Sites said, per WABC.
“Just glad we got him out… it was just in time,” Shroff added.
Islam’s father, Naushad Islam, told NBC4 that his son required surgery for back and neck injuries and spent a week in the hospital, but is now recovering at home.
“He’s doing well, he’s talking,” he said. “When he was in the hospital, we weren’t sure how he was doing. It was really, really bad.”
“I would say that compared to what he went through, it’s nothing but divine intervention,” Naushad Islam said, according to NBC4.
South Brunswick police have described the officers’ rapid response as “heroic.”
“This is a miracle — a Thanksgiving miracle, I’d call it,” a police spokesperson told NBC4.
