Pennsylvania Medics Free Woman Trapped in Wreckage

The voice on the other end of the telephone at 3:30 a.m. yesterday repeated two words to Janet McGonigal: "Be calm."

The sentence that followed caused her mind to race and her stomach to drop.

"Your daughter has been in an accident and her vital signs are fine," the paramedic said.

Ms. McGonigal wanted to know: "How bad is she hurt?"

But all the paramedic could tell her was "your daughter's vital signs are fine."

Elizabeth A. McGonigal, 19, was returning from her boyfriend's house in West Mifflin around 1:30 a.m. yesterday when a dump truck hauling slag crashed into her Plymouth Breeze and left her pinned in the vehicle for 80 minutes while paramedics and firefighters worked to extricate her.

The truck driver, Oliver L. Allen, 40, of Penn Hills, told police he tried to avoid hitting the car as he descended a hill, but his brakes locked up and the truck swerved, hitting the Plymouth.

Janet McGonigal prayed after she hung up the telephone.

"I prayed to God [to] let her be hurt, but not dead. I can handle it if she's hurt. Anything else I wouldn't ..." she said, her voice trailing off to a small sob.

Elizabeth McGonigal said she remembers little of the accident. She recalls being only three blocks away from her boyfriend's house and trying to make a left from Clairton Road/Route 885 onto Lebanon Church Road, near the Allegheny County Airport.

She saw the bright lights of the dump truck driving toward her.

"I saw this big truck coming at me and I just knew I was going to die," she said last night from her room at Mercy Hospital.

Then it all went black, she said.

She awoke to the voice of Sean Lear, West Mifflin paramedic crew chief, telling her: "Honey, you were in an accident and we're going to get you out of the car."

Her feet were pinned under the pedals. The roof of her crumpled shell of a car was only two inches above her head. The driver's side door was pushing against her broken pelvis. She could not feel her leg. Her left femur was broken.

Firefighters from West Mifflin, Clairton and Pleasant Hills had to use a hydraulic "jaws of life" to free her.

Her mother said rescuers removed most of the front end of the car -- including the dashboard, the roof, a significant portion of the passenger side and the console where the automatic gear shift is located.

"I'm so grateful," Elizabeth McGonigal said. Paramedics kept her calm as firefighters sliced into the frame of the car before freeing her.

"Something up there was watching over me," she said. "I'm feeling pretty lucky right now."

Mr. Lear and his partner, David Taylor, a West Mifflin emergency medical technician, worked with other rescuers to comfort Elizabeth throughout the extrication process.

"You have to treat people in that situation like your own family and keep reassuring them that everything is going to be OK," Mr. Lear said.

Janet McGonigal, having awakened from her sleep in a state of panic, arrived at the hospital not knowing about her daughter's condition.

Two words put her at ease.

"Hi mom," Elizabeth said to her as she walked into the room.

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