A veteran reporter with NBC News risked his own life to save a teenage driver trapped inside a burning vehicle on a Maryland highway — and successfully rescued him just moments before the fiery wreck exploded.
Tom Costello, a senior correspondent with NBC News, was driving home on the Capital Beltway after work last Tuesday when a car flew by him and slammed into a concrete barrier.
He watched in abject horror as the car did a full flip and exploded, sending pieces scattering across the highway as a fire ignited beneath the wreckage, he recalled on NBC News the following day.
Costello immediately called 911 — warning them that “somebody in here is in bad shape.”
When he got out and approached the car, he assumed he would find a dead body behind the wheel, the journalist grimly admitted.
Instead, he found the shellshocked 17-year-old driver sitting there, alive and somehow still conscious.
“I thought, ‘nobody could survive this’. And it was a teenager. He was stunned. He wasn’t speaking. He had a gaze in his eyes, he was looking out the front windshield,” Costello recounted.
The teen responded to Costello’s attempts to grab his attention, but could only croak that “everything hurts.”
Meanwhile, the fire was rapidly growing, but Costello didn’t want to risk further injuring the boy by moving him.
Costello started frantically waving down passersby and miraculously flagged an orthopedic surgeon and a nurse.
The surgeon secured the boy by his neck and head while Costello handled his torso, and the nurse grasped his legs. They hoisted him out of the smoldering wreckage moments before the car exploded.
Pete Piringer, the chief spokesperson for Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service, confirmed that the teen survived the harrowing ordeal.
And within the next 12 hours, Costello was back on the air, as if nothing had ever happened.
“I think the lesson here is watch your kids. I mean, this was a 17-year-old, probably hadn’t been driving long, 100 miles per hour, he should be dead. I can’t believe he’s alive, to be honest with you,” Costello advised.
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