Teen driver thanks 5 officers who saved his life after fiery crash on Long Island
By Chanteé Lans
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YAPHANK, New York (WABC) — There was an emotional reunion on Wednesday between a driver involved in a serious crash in Suffolk County and the police officers who saved his life.
The teenaged driver lost consciousness and his car burst into flames last November. But fortunately, responding officers got to him on time and pulled him from the overturned vehicle.
Kervens Lesperance, 19, saw the shocking video for the first time on Wednesday.
Lesperance crashed his Jeep Cherokee into an overpass before it caught fire. He was driving southbound on Nicholls Road near exit 62 in Holtsville on Nov. 24.
Suffolk County police officers Robert Stroehlein, Craig Capobianco, Joseph Nofi, Robert Rosciano and Michael Renna rallied together to pull Lesperance to safety.
“I grabbed Kervens myself being that the impact of the crashed caved the steering column downward on his lap,” Capobianco said.
Highway Patrol Officer Capobianco was the first on the scene.
“The timing, I can’t stress it enough, it worked in our favor that night,” Capobianco said.
Once freed, police body camera video shows the teen’s body inadvertently pinning one of the officers with him into a nearby embankment.
“When I pulled him out of the vehicle, I had slipped and I had fallen in between the embankment and that vehicle that was obviously engulfed, at which point in time Kervens was on top of me,” Capobianco said.
Officer Renna rushed to extinguish the fire. The roof was completely caved and nearly gone and Lesperance was unconscious the entire time.
“The only thing I remembered is waking up in my home and saying that I had a bad accident,” Lesperance said.
On Wednesday, he walked into the Suffolk County Police headquarters suffering from a torn ligament in his neck and a fractured skull, but he got to meet the five officers who saved his life.
“I just want to say I’m glad that I’m here and I just want to say thank you for saving me,” Lesperance said.
Aside from being gracious, Lesperance plans to continue school. His major is automotive and he hopes to enter that field in the near future.
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