Strangers stop to help after ambulance accident in Malta

MALTA – Daniel Walker of Saratoga Lake was on his way to plow a couple of properties Monday morning, when he came upon an accident.

“I was coming up over the hill on Route 9 towards Malta Avenue and by the time I got there the accident had just happened,” he said. “The box truck was pulling over in front of the diner where he parked and the ambulance was already down in a ditch.”

Luckily, the injured crew and patient were able to get out in time.

Walker is head of maintenance for Calendula Property Management.

He stopped to help Monday morning, after a box truck collided with the ambulance on Route 9 in Malta.

“I assumed that the ambulance probably slid off the road because the roads were bad, until I realized that the guy from Locust Grove across the street was running over on his phone with 911 already,” he said. “Then it kind of set in. I looked and saw the ambulance was all smashed up in the front, and it started to catch on fire at that point.”

Walker was one of three or four people who helped at the scene.

“One EMT hopped out of one side. He was all disoriented, more worried about the lady EMT and the patient in the back. So we got the door open. We got the lady out. Luckily, I don’t know her name, but a nurse stopped, and she took the lady EMT in her car. We– me, the guy from the Locust Grove, and the guy that was driving the ambulance– unloaded the patient, and we put her in the passenger seat of my truck until the other guys arrived to help her out.”

Walker says the front of the ambulance became engulfed in flames.

He says the ambulance crew, though injured, still focused on others.

“They were phenomenal, even the lady that was in the back, you could tell she had whacked her head pretty good, and she was disoriented, but she was more worried about him and the patient.”

According to the head of Malta Stillwater EMS, the ambulance crew– a paramedic and an EMT– are out of the hospital.

Walker’s Calendula co-workers are proud of him for being a Good Samaritan.

He says he’s just glad he was there.

“I’m the kind of guy who pulls over for people on the side of the highway,” Walker said. “My mom tells me I’m crazy, she always gets worried about me, but I don’t know, I would just hope that if it was my mom or somebody in my family, somebody would have stopped and done the same thing for them.”