A U.S. Marine Corps veteran and truck driver who used combat trauma training to save a fellow motorist on an Arkansas highway last month has been officially recognized as a “Highway Angel” by the Truckload Carriers Association.
James Brown was driving for Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Melton Truck Lines through heavy rain and low visibility on the afternoon of May 22 when he saw another trucker lose control, drift off the road, and overturn roughly 40 miles east of Little Rock, according to a statement from the TCA.
Brown pulled over, jumped out of his cab, and ran to the wreck after watching the truck slide about 75 feet, the association reported. He helped the trapped driver out of the overturned cab and immediately noticed a piece of metal lodged in the man’s leg.
“Before I could tell him, ‘Don’t pull that out,’ he pulled it out,” Brown recounted in the TCA statement.
The removal of the metal severed an artery, causing heavy bleeding that Brown recognized as life-threatening. Drawing on battlefield medical skills he learned during 12 years of service in the U.S. Marines, he cut a seatbelt into strips and made a tourniquet.
“He wasn’t making much sense” and “had lost quite a bit of blood” by the time emergency crews reached the scene, Brown said, but the driver remained conscious throughout the ordeal.
Brown stayed at the crash site for nearly two hours after first responders arrived, providing witness statements to investigators before continuing his delivery, the TCA said.
The TCA’s Highway Angels program, established in 1997, recognizes truck drivers who demonstrate “kindness, courtesy and courage” while on duty. Brown was inducted on June 4.
Brown told the association he acted out of a simple principle: “If that had been me …, I would hope somebody would stop and help. My wife, my children – I’d hope somebody would stop and do the same for them.”