News Details (Posted: January 3, 2006):

Partygoers save toddler trapped in burning van

Full Description:

It was on the way home from a New Year's Eve party that Jennifer Shaddle got a terrifying, eyewitness look at the danger her husband faces every time he goes to work as a paramedic. Early Sunday in Santa Clara, Dennis Shaddle and another passing motorist, from Campbell, rescued a 2-year-old girl from a burning minivan. The van had caught fire after it lost a wheel, and the girl's mother apparently continued to drive on the sparking wheel hub, authorities said. The Shaddles had been heading home to Discovery Bay from a party in San Jose about 1:45 a.m. when they spotted the van on Lawrence Expressway near Lehigh Drive -- smoking and on fire. ``We could see some flames coming out of the bottom and some smoke coming from the engine,'' said Dennis Shaddle, a Santa Clara Fire Department paramedic. Peter Perino and his fiancee were also on their way home from a New Year's Eve party when they saw the chaos. ``I noticed a bunch of people holding back a woman who was trying to claw her way back to the van,'' said Perino, 36, an account manager at DHL, the global delivery company. The woman, who was speaking in Spanish, which they did not understand, seemed hysterical, Shaddle and Perino said. Perino, decked out in party attire, ran over to the van and tried to open the doors. They were locked, so he grabbed a Maglite flashlight from his car and bashed in a window on the passenger side. The smoke was so thick, Perino and Shaddle couldn't see inside. Once the window broke, they could hear a child crying. Perino broke a second window on the passenger side and the men found the child, strapped in a safety seat in the middle passenger row. Inside the van, Shaddle said, he fumbled in the thick smoke for about 20 seconds trying to unbuckle the girl. Meanwhile, Shaddle's wife watched as the flames on the driver's side grew more intense. ``They were coming up and over to the window of the other side,'' she said. Her husband finally got the girl out of the van. She seemed fine. A few minutes later, flames engulfed her seat. Jennifer Shaddle started crying. ``You know what they do,'' she said of her husband's profession, ``but you rarely get to see it.'' As of Sunday night, police had not released the names of the girl or her mother. Neither Shaddle nor Perino knew whether the woman had tried to remove her daughter from the van herself, or how the doors got locked once she was out. Randy Titus, a battalion chief with the Santa Clara Fire Department, said CHP investigators also are trying to determine why the woman continued driving after the left front wheel fell off the van. For the Shaddles and Perino and his fiancee, what was important was that the girl was OK. Their chance meeting on the side of the road just hours into 2006 was a reminder of how precious life can be, Jennifer Shaddle said. ``It was a good way to start the year.''