By Mithil Aggarwal -
NBC News
An off-duty firefighter saved a woman's life when he pulled her out of a burning car without any protective gear or a fire hose, Connecticut officials said Saturday.
Nicholas Perri Jr. “gained access to a (flaming) engulfed vehicle and successfully removed the severely injured female driver as the fire progressed into the passenger compartment,” the Brookfield Fire Department said in a statement.
[They record how a police officer who couldn't swim heroically jumps into a pond to save a drowning baby]
The statement says he took the woman to an emergency care center and then transferred her to the hospital.
He added that the firefighter only suffered minor injuries and refused to be taken in for treatment.
Firefighters work to extinguish a burning car in Brookfield, Connecticut on November 26, 2022.Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company
“Instinct kicked in, training, and I ran and did the best I could to get her out,” Perri Jr. told NBC New York after the incident on Route 7 in southern Connecticut.
“I assessed how she was doing and then I broke the front passenger window.
I was able to free one of her legs, the other one was pretty mangled, which gave us a hard time,” she said.
"I yelled at him, 'You have to work with me because we're running out of time.'"
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Brookfield Fire Department Chief Andrew Ellis was one of the first to arrive at the scene and was surprised to see a fellow firefighter.
"
The victim would not have survived in any way, if he did not do what he did
," said Ellis.