‘Pray for Me, I Have 4 Children’ : Cyclist Rescues Woman Shot on Freeway

Patrick Black said he didn’t think twice last week when he saw a woman running along Glendale Freeway trying to flag down cars. The 37-year-old graphic artist stopped his motorcycle just north of the Ventura Freeway interchange and went to the woman’s aid.

“I’ve been shot. Please take me to the hospital,” the woman, Yvonne R. Lambey, 34, of Los Angeles told Black.

Black put the woman, who had a bullet wound in the chest, on his motorcycle and sped to nearby Glendale Community College. The victim collapsed at the entrance to the campus administration center, where a nurse gave first aid until paramedics arrived, witnesses said.

Glendale police said the shooting last Thursday morning occurred as the woman was arguing with her estranged husband while driving on the freeway.

The victim told police that her husband, Predencio D. Lambey, 36, pulled a gun as she was driving north on Glendale Freeway. They struggled over the gun, she told investigators, and was shot after she managed to pull her van to the side of the road.

Police on Wednesday were still seeking the husband as a suspect in the shooting.

Yvonne Lambey was in stable condition Wednesday at Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial Hospital.

Meanwhile, authorities have credited Black with perhaps saving the woman’s life.

“It was a life-threatening situation. The young man thought fast and he got her where she could get help,” said Anne Marie Novinger, director of the campus health center and the nurse who treated the victim first.

Black, a Glendale resident who attended the college from 1983 to 1985, was pale and nervous as he talked about the incident immediately after it happened. He pointed to the bloodstains on his jacket and recalled how the woman had clung to him on the motorcycle.

“She said, ‘Pray for me, I’ve got four children,’ ” Black recalled.