Good Samaritan Risks Life To Help Stalled Driver On Highway
COLONY (CBS 11 NEWS) - A Good Samaritan's act of selflessness helps save a life, but puts his own in jeopardy.
As Tim Teuscher was helping a young woman, Lauren Wells, out of her stalled car mid-morning Tuesday, a third vehicle slammed into Teuscher's truck striking them both.
"It's hard to see him when he can't move," a tearful Allyson Teuscher told CBS 11 News outside her father's hospital Thursday. "I know he's getting better and I know he's…but it's hard to see him the way he is right now."
Teuscher's wife and family have staged a bedside vigil at his hospital for two days.
"I'm happy he saved somebody; the girl he saved was about my sister's age. She was somebody else's daughter," said Teuscher.
That young woman, Lauren Wells, agrees. "He did push me out of the way; saved my life," Wells says of the elder Teuscher.
Wells had run out of gas on the access road of the Sam Rayburn Tollway. Teuscher pulled his pickup behind her, put on his hazard lights, and urged her to get out of her car. They didn't know it, but behind them another vehicle was trying to pass a much slower truck on that truck's right-hand side...directly into their lane. The two had apparently just cleared their vehicles when the third car slammed into Teucher's truck, flipping it over onto both of them.
"It came up and slammed right behind him. Hit his truck, Mr. Teuscher's truck, and came towards us," Wells said. "It ran over my legs and it all just happened so fast and then the next thing I knew I see him pinned underneath his truck."
Wells received several gashes, including one cut all the way to the bone. But Teuscher's family says he suffered a collapsed lung, broke nearly every rib, broke an arm and had his spine fused. He's been off and on a ventilator.
"He responds a little bit when you try to talk to him. He'll open his eyes, and when they've given him a sedation "vacation" he squeezes fingers like he can and he wiggles his toes," says another of Teucher's daughters, Ashley Franci.
"It'll probably be months before he's back to where he was. With his foot I don't know how long he'll be able to stand but they do want to get him as mobile as possible," she says.
Police say their investigation is ongoing and are not identifying the third driver. But they know who it is. Despite their shared pain, Teuscher's family is proud of what he did.
"I think that's what makes it easy to handle, no one was shocked that that's how it happened," says Franci. "My mom is always telling him not to stop for people on the road because something's going to happen to him, so nobody was shocked that it happened that way."
Tucher's grandson, Gavin Teuscher, made a point on which both families agree. "He had to sacrifice himself to save a girl's life."
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