By Nancy McCleary
The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Highway Patrol Trooper J.C. Toon was off-duty on Sept. 17 when he drove up on a vehicle that had just run off Claude Lee Road, overturned and caught fire.
“There was a lady there on the phone who called 911,” Toon said. “I asked if anyone was in that car and she said yes.”
Toon, 49, wasted no time getting to the wreckage at the bottom of a hill and pulling a woman, who was partially ejected, away from the burning car, just before the fire fully ignited.
His actions that day earned him the Highway Patrol Award of Valor, which was presented to him today in a ceremony in Raleigh.
“It’s probably nothing that no other trooper probably wouldn’t have done,” said Toon, who is assigned to the Troop B Reconstruction Team based in Fayetteville.
Toon, an 18-year Highway Patrol veteran, was on his way to Lowe’s in Hope Mills when he happened upon the 2006 Chevrolet Impala that had run off the road at Research Drive, between Interstate 95 and Snow Hill Road.
“I was approaching the car and I heard this lady hollering, ‘Help me, help me,” said Toon, who served in the Army and worked as a Fayetteville police officer.
He found the woman, Sashawnee Caulder, 36, of St. Pauls, lying on her back next to the car, her head near the engine. She was covered in blood, he said, from her head to her waist.
“I said, ‘Ma’am, I’m going to pull you down the hill,” Toon said. “I grabbed her feet and she started yelling, ‘Pull me, pull me.’”
All troopers are required to go through training yearly in which they are required to drag between 100 and 150 pounds a distance of 50 feet and back, Toon said.
The training kicked in.
Toon dragged Caulder away from the car as the fire began to intensify.
That’s when he learned another person was trapped in the car. Toon didn’t hesitate to go back.
“As I walked toward the car, I heard a ‘pop’ and ‘boom,’” Toon said.
The fire quickly spread to nearby woods as the car’s hood began to burn. As Toon was trying to figure out how to pull the second person from the car, firefighters arrived.
They quickly put out the fire and used a hydraulic tool to open the car.
They discovered the driver, William Runnell Currie II, 43, of Raleigh, inside. He was dead, believed to have been killed on impact.
“Had it not been for the quick and selfless actions of Toon,” a Highway Patrol release said, “the woman would have certainly been burned and most likely would have died.”
©2017 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)