Brooklyn, NY +Garage Fire+

Corrections Officer Rescues Family In Sinking Car
(AP) LAKEWOOD, N.J. A New Jersey family, whose car nearly crashed down a ravine, is safe at home thanks to a quick thinking corrections officer who helped rescue the family as the car teetered on the edge of disaster in Lakewood.

The officer, Tonya Richardson, returned to the site of the wreck with CBS 2 News’ Deborah Garcia on Wednesday and still cannot believe the chain of events that occurred after a car barreled through a guardrail and into an embankment surrounded a body of water.

Richardson helped rescue four children out of the sinking car, after their father, Yitzchok Golombeck, had driven the family’s Chevrolet off the road and partially into the water.

“The last thing I was expecting to see was the car going over the water,” Richardson said. But as soon as she saw the car begin to slide in, she took action, running to the crash and pulling out the children one-by-one.

“I was thinking, ‘There’s a baby in the car, there’s a baby in the car. Let me go back and try to get the baby,” she recalls.

To make matters worse, the embankment is covered in sand and Richardson herself kept slipping, but she didn’t care about her personal safety — she simply wanted to save the children.

“It was wet and I was sliding down, but I was holding on to the little girl cause i didn’t want to let her go,” she says.

Thanks to Richardson’s actions, the entire family made it out alive. But Richardson is too modest to call herself a hero.

“It was just somebody I could help, and I did what I could,” she says.

Lakewood police are still investigating the cause of the crash, but say the driver told them he might have fallen asleep.