For Frank Vieria, saving a life – or two – is just part of a day’s work.
Vieria, a tanker driver for the Tandet group’s Connell Transport, was just about to deliver his load to a customer in downtown Toronto last year when he heard a loud crash behind his left shoulder. He saw that a passenger car had rear-ended a roll-off truck in the opposite lane and one of the truck’s overhanging steel beams had gone through the front windshield. He quickly pulled his truck to the side of the two-lane road and leapt out to assist.
When he approached the driver’s side of the car, Frank noticed part of the broken steering column had pierced the driver’s throat.
“He was bleeding profusely,” Vieria recalls. “There was blood all over him and in the car. He was in shock and it looked like he was losing consciousness.”
Frank instinctually pried open the car door and maneuvered his arm and hands underneath the penetrating steel beam. He immediately applied pressure on the open wound to try and stop the flow of blood. “I remember my arm, all the way up to my elbow was covered in blood.”
With his free hand, Frank dialled 9-11 and spoke to an emergency services operator. All of a sudden, someone approached him from behind. Frank turned around to see it was the driver of the roll-off truck; but once the man caught a glimpse of the graphic scene inside the car he passed out and hit the pavement.
