(The following article by Adam C. Hartmann was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on January 28.)
LOS ANGELES — Dean Jaeschke didn’t hesitate when he heard a badly injured passenger plea for someone to rescue him from the burning, gnarled wreckage of a Metrolink train near Glendale early Wednesday.
Ignoring warnings from onlookers, the 50-year-old truck driver from Winchester jumped in and pulled Scott McKeown’s blood-soaked body from the train.
McKeown died soon after Jaeschke freed him, but lived long enough to thank rescuers for not letting him burn alive. He was one of 11 people killed when a man apparently abandoned his SUV on the tracks and caused two commuter trains to collide in the deadliest U.S. rail accident in nearly six years.
AP photo
Dean Jaeschke of Winchester risked his life to help.
Jaeschke’s wife and boss said Thursday they are not surprised that he tried to help.
“Dean’s the kind of guy who just digs in,” said Ken Smith, president of Southwest Traders, a food distribution company based in Temecula.
Jaeschke delivers ice cream to Southern California Costco stores for Southwest Traders and was on the Glendale store’s loading dock near the tracks when disaster struck. He and others ran to the wrecked train cars.
Climbing several feet of wreckage, Jaeschke found McKeown, who was trapped and covered in blood and soot. It appeared his arms and legs were broken.
“He just said, ‘Get me out of here, I don’t want to burn,’ ” Jaeschke said. He said he told others two or three times that he needed help.
Hugo Moran, a 34-year-old Costco receiving clerk who helped pull several people to safety, said, “We all backed off because there was fuel everywhere.”
Jaeschke persisted.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he said he told McKeown. Another driver jumped in to help, and they pulled him out.
“He didn’t moan, he didn’t scream,” Jaeschke said. “I know he wasn’t in pain. I want his wife and family to know that.”
Deborah Jaeschke, 49, said her husband was upset when he learned that McKeown had died, leaving a wife and children.
“It shook him up,” she said by phone, adding that her husband “just wished that he could have done more.”
She added her husband had nightmares about the crash Wednesday night.
The crash recalled traumatic memories for Dean Jaeschke, who at age 17 was nearly killed in a crash while returning home from Las Vegas with his brother and father. The driver lost control and the car hurtled off the road, flipping seven times. Jaeschke, who had been sleeping in the back, was thrown from the car, which then landed on him. Hot oil spilled over his body.
Strangers from another car pulled him out, he said. He endured 40 operations and spent months in the hospital, emerging with scars on his face, chest and arms.
Jaeschke doesn’t give up, his wife said.
She recalled one fishing trip when her husband caught a 35-pound catfish that slipped through a butterfly net.
Her husband jumped in after the fish, which got away.
Smith said he and Jaeschke met in 1981, and the truck driver began working for him soon after. The two used to play softball together and still play poker occasionally.
“Dean’s brought a lot of smiles to me over these years,” Smith said by phone.
Smith said he threw Jaeschke a 50th birthday party in December.
Deborah Jaeschke said she used to accompany her husband on overnight runs to Las Vegas and Arizona. A bone disease keeps her home now.
“Nobody works as hard as that man,” she said.