Ocoee resident, first responder helps woman injured in S.R. 429 crash

A single-vehicle rollover on State Road 429 south of Florida’s Turnpike Monday sent a woman to the hospital as a trauma alert, according to Orange County Fire Rescue.

Steven Montiero, Florida Highway Patrol trooper and community safety officer, said the driver was the only person in the car at the time. 

OCFR Public Information Officer Kat Kennedy said OCFR removed the roof of the car to extract the victim, who was trapped inside, and transported her to Orlando Regional Medical Center as a trauma alert.

Ocoee resident Brian Lancaster, a former police officer and first responder, drove up on the scene of the accident and stopped to help.

“I just saw people standing around trying to figure out what to do and then went into first-responder mode,” he said. “A guy there told me it looked like she was cut off and either got clipped or swerved and went into a roll several times.”

Lancaster wrote in a Facebook post that as he made sure the woman did not move her neck, she was initially unresponsive and struggling to breathe.

“I saw blood coming out of her side pretty good, and another guy came up and got behind her for C-Spine and I grabbed a towel and put pressure on the bleeding to try to minimize some of her blood loss,” he wrote in his post. “One of the moving things though was looking into her eyes and letting her know that we were there to help her and more help was on the way. As I kept repeating that and telling her she was going to be OK, the grey haze in her eyes went away and she started responding. Her challenged breathing started becoming more consistent.”

No further details on the crash or the woman’s condition have been released.

Contact Danielle Hendrix at [email protected].