Passers-By Aid in Rescue

A screaming woman trapped in a car dangling from a freeway transition road in East Los Angeles was rescued after passers-by tied ropes to the vehicle and held on to prevent it from crashing 40 feet to the pavement below, fire officials said. Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Ross Marshall said that when his units arrived on the scene, firefighters secured cables to the car and two paramedics finally managed to crawl across the vehicle, pry open a door and pull the woman to safety.

Stable Condition

After a 2 1/2-hour struggle, the 19-year-old woman, whose name was not immediately released, was flown by Fire Department helicopter to the UCLA Medical Center, where she was later reported in stable condition with multiple injuries. Marshall said the woman apparently fell asleep behind the wheel about 12:15 a.m. Saturday as she was heading onto the eastbound Pomona Freeway along a transition road from the southbound Long Beach Freeway. The car, which plunged through a guardrail, was left dangling by its left rear wheel. Half a dozen passing motorists stopped, grabbed some ropes from one of their vehicles, tied the ropes to the back of the woman’s car and hung on until the fire units arrived, Marshall said.

“It was kinda funny”,he recalled later. “She kept saying, ‘I,ll do it myself.”