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David Kelley, Mark Kinkaid Sue Woman They Saved From a Burning Vehicle

By Cory Zurowski in Heroes
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 9:00 am
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On a late winter night in March 2009, David Kelley and his pal Mark Kinkaid were motoring along Route 23 in Marion County, Ohio when they spotted gray smoke wafting up from a deep highway embankment. On the pavement in front of them was strewn a bumper and busted headlights...

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Police believe Teresa Tanner deliberately drove her Hummer off the road in an attempt to kill herself, leaving the prettiest post-accident scene you'll ever come across. But that's just how we roll in Ohio. Even our suicide attempts are beautiful.
They braked their ride down to a crawl, then stopped and killed the engine. At the bottom of the slope, Kinkaid and Kelley watched as an inferno was swallowing up a red Hummer SUV.

The men jumped a barbed-wire fence, made their way through a maze of downed trees and brush and bolted to the mangled, fiery wreck.

"Help Me! Help me!" a female voice screamed from inside the vehicle. 

Battling noxious smoke and heat so intense it melted their cell phones and singed their hair, Kinkaid and Kelley busted a window out with a tire iron. The impact of the crash had tossed the Hummer's driver -- 26-year-old Theresa Tanner -- into the passenger seat.

Both men extended their arms trying to first locate Tanner through the smoke and then grab her, but because the Hummer's windows were so small they couldn't reach her. 

The men next muscled a door open and pulled Tanner from the reaper's grip.

According to statement written by Kelley later that day, he was so overcome by smoke inhalation he had to have Kinkaid carry Tanner up the hill to safety. 

Tanner would survive the accident, although she would spend several weeks in Grant Medical Center's intensive-care unit. 

In the ensuing investigation into the crash, authorities concluded the accident happened because Tanner was attempting suicide. 

Three months after saving Tanner's life, her rescuers were honored as heroes at a ceremony hosted by the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

Now, two years and change later, things have changed.

This past spring Tanner's two heroes went turncoat on their maiden in distress. 

According to a lawsuit filed this past spring, the plaintiffs charge that Tanner intentionally caused, and thus was at fault for the crash. And as a result of coming to her aid, both suffered permanent and disabling injuries. 

Both men seeking $25,000 each in damages -- a standard monetary starting number in civil cases.

According to legal experts, Kinkaid and Kelley are following a federally recognized tort law known as "the Rescue Doctrine."

In essence, the precedent says that if the people being rescued were reckless or negligent when they created the danger they find themselves in, it opens up the door for their rescuers to recover damages resulting from their injuries.

Kelley, a truck driver and father of five, says he isn't the same man since saving Tanner. Because his lungs were so badly damaged from the smoke and fire that night, he now says he can't carry a laundry basket up the three flights of stairs in his Marion home.

"What I saw that day... haunts me," Kelley told The Columbus Dispatch. "... There isn't hardly a night that goes by that I don't wake up in a sweat...."

Kelley says mounting medical bills and no health insurance have wrecked him financially. 

Moreover, he and Kinkaid add they only filed the lawsuit after they found out the crash was the result of Tanner attempting to end her life.

See our last tale from the Great Moral Dilemmas of the Day file: Robert Bruszenski Beats His 40-Year-Old, Wheelchair-Bound Daughter.

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