Monday, February 08, 1999
Teen pulls friend from fiery wreck
Victim has fractures, but no major burns
BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Schoenling
|
Giordano
|
GREEN TOWNSHIP — In Tony Schoenling's mind, the scene replays in pieces. Jamming to WEBN on his car radio, a half-mile from home. Watching his friend speed up to pass him.
Then ... “I was like, "Oh my God,'” the 17-year-old LaSalle High School junior recounted Sunday in the living room of his family's Green Township home, 12 hours after the Sunday morning accident.
In a split-second, there was the scream of brakes, the twisted wreckage wrapped around a tree, fire pouring out from under the hood, and an unconscious friend, partially ejected from the burning car.
Tony Schoenling saw only the friend.
Tony's quick thinking, to pull schoolmate Eric Giordano to safety minutes before his car became fully engulfed, has fire officials calling Tony a life-saver.
Eric, the 16-year-old math-whiz who helped Tony through pre-calculus class this year, underwent surgery for multiple fractures and is listed in serious condition at University Hospital. He suffered no serious burns.
“I didn't even think,” an exhausted Tony said Sunday afternoon as he prepared to leave for a LaSalle junior class retreat in Dayton, Ohio. “The first thing was to just get him out. I don't consider myself a hero.”
Others disagree.
“Some people might have chosen not to pull him out,” said Green Township firefighter Mike Nie, whose department responded to the 12:45 a.m. crash on Jessup Road. “And that's a decision everyone has to make. This guy makes his decision, and because of that, at least he gave him a fighting chance.”
Rescue workers generally don't recommend people remove victims from the car, unless they're in dire danger. “And that seems the case (here),” Mr. Nie said. “He did save his life.”
The car was on its side, mangled. Tony said that as he pulled Eric from the driver's side window, he heard the car backfire. His heart leapt. He rushed to his cellular phone and called 911.
A dispatcher told him he needed to pull Eric farther from the burning wreckage, so Tony returned and pulled Eric about 30 feet from the car.
Tony couldn't tell whether Eric was wearing his seat belt.
“His mother just called,” Eric said, after answering the phone Sunday. “She just said "Thank you.' ”
In the seconds he watched his friend's Pontiac hit the tree, there was no time to think. But after he calmed down, spoke with crash investigators and drove home, there was nothing but time to think.
He thought about his freshman year.
He remembered how he met Eric, a future National Honor Society member, and how they realized their common interests. They were in the same English and math classes, but it was in math where Eric's test-preparation help pulled Tony from many academic crashes.
They had been out with friends Saturday night, and when they left together, Tony dropped off Eric at his car. They drove off separately, Tony just ahead of Eric.
As they drove northeast on Jessup, they went around a bend that opened to a short stretch of straight-away with a double yellow line prohibiting passing.
Eric, according to Tony and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department, tried to pass anyway. “I just thought about staying as far to the right as possible,” Tony recalled.
As he passed, Eric lost control of his car. He was about 100 yards ahead of Tony when the car spun off the road, struck several mailboxes — and then the long-needle pine on Edna Stopper's front lawn at 4439 Jessup.
“I was sound asleep and it was so loud I thought it was thunder,” said Ms. Stopper, who's lived there for 42 years. “I came out and saw him dragging him from the car. It was on fire.”
But Ms. Stopper saw something that Tony didn't: telephone wires dangling above the wreckage.
Sunday afternoon, as she recalled the accident that left a scatter of small car pieces on her front lawn, Cincinnati Bell workers re placed about a 10-foot section of plastic insulation that wraps around the wire.
It had melted from the heat, a field supervisor said at the scene. Service to about 1,000 customers was interrupted Sunday.
Reminders of the crash remain. The dark-blue Pontiac's hood ornament and a part of a headlight fixture were about 75 feet away, on the edge of Ms. Stopper's lawn.
Up the road a half-mile, a 17-year-old high school football and baseball player doesn't consider himself a hero.
But a lot of people think he should.
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