Woman who had baby 4 days earlier pulls man from burning tanker truck moments before it explodes

INDIANAPOLIS — A woman who had given birth four days earlier pulled a man from a burning tanker truck moments before it exploded Thursday.

Holly McNally was on her way home from the neonatal intensive care unit visiting her newborn child when she saw the wreckage, KSL reported.

“We see a plume of smoke, huge smoke. Like it looked like a warehouse on fire,” McNally told WTHR. “I saw the actual semi on fire and then looked to the front of the semi and then I see a man on fire, like his head was burning. I told my mom, ‘I’m stopping and I’m going over there.’ and she’s like, ‘No you’re not.’ I was like, ‘I am.’”

She pulled the driver from the cab as another bystander arrived to help, WTHR reported. The truck driver told McNally his name was Jeff. McNally, 35, noticed a stream of liquid and could smell a distinct odor as they made their way from the truck.

“I said, ‘Jeff, honey, what are you hauling?'” McNally recalled to KSL. “And he said, ‘Jet fuel.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.'”

The truck exploded moments later.

“If we would not have moved and gotten out of that area, we all would have been gone,” she told WTHR. “Besides delivering a baby. That was crazy, yes."

McNally expects her son Connor to be released from the hospital Monday.

The driver was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

Cox Media Group