CLAY COUNTY — It took only three minutes after the Clay County Sheriff’s Office received a call Tuesday for a head-on collision on Highway 50 for Chief Deputy Woody Woodruff to get to the scene.
When he arrived, he found an SUV in flames and two men trapped inside.
“I was the first person there law-enforcement-wise,” Woodruff told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “I saw that the vehicle was on fire, and the first thing I did was take my wallet out and my phone and my keys, and put them in my truck seat, because I knew if I got over there and it blew up, I needed my wife to find my stuff.”
Two cars headed opposite directions had collided head-on at about 7:30 a.m., Sheriff Eddie Scott told The Dispatch Wednesday, just outside of West Point city limits.
James Hill, 29, of Macon, died on his way to North Mississippi Medical Center, Lee County Coroner Tim Tate told The Dispatch. Another man involved in the crash suffered serious injuries.
Woodruff said that when he got to the wreck, he saw one car with a female driver had spun into the ditch on the side of the highway, and the SUV had flipped onto its side and caught on fire. A third car later skidded into the accident.
Once he saw that the drivers of the other two vehicles were safe, Woodruff said he got “tunnel vision” on the flaming SUV. One of the men inside was shouting for help.
Woodruff said he kicked in the SUV’s sunroof “just enough” to grab one man by the top of his pants and slide him out from the vehicle. He passed the man off to two nurses, who had stopped on the side of the road to help. The nurses had been on the way to work in town.
“I still don’t know their names,” Woodruff said. “They were sent there from heaven.”
Paramedics arrived soon after, also helping with medical assistance, Woodruff said, but the vehicle fire was growing, and Hill was still trapped inside — pinned by broken seats.
Woodruff crawled inside the car through the sunroof, grabbing Hill by his shoestrings, lifting his legs and maneuvering him out of the back of the vehicle toward paramedics, who pulled him out. Woodruff then escaped from the car just a few seconds before it might have been too late.
“I got out just as the fire had gotten into the cab, and it singed my uniform a little bit,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff said he, the nurses and the paramedics moved the two men farther away from the fire. Seconds later, the flames reached the gas tank, engulfing the vehicle in flames.
“Luckily (Woodruff) was there and got there as quick as he did, because if he didn’t, they probably would have burned to death in that vehicle,” Scott said.
Hill was airlifted to NMMC, but he passed away before he could make it there.
“If there’s any consolation, he died in the arms of some medical personnel and not in the arms of the fire,” Woodruff said. “That’s the only consolation that there is, and it breaks my heart that he passed anyway.”
The other man in the SUV was airlifted to a hospital in Jackson to be treated for his injuries, Scott said. The female driver of the other car, he said, appeared to be “shaken, but OK.”
Mississippi Highway Patrol is investigating the wreck.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 38 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
