Serving the High Plains

Two young women recognized for saving life

link Rebecca Trujillo (left) and Angelica Gonzales receive certificates

from Tucumcari Mayor Robert Lumpkin recognizing their heroic

actions that saved the life of an injured truck driver after a fatal

accident Dec. 13 on U.S. 54 near Tucumcari.

By Steve Hansen

QCS Managing Editor

Rebecca Trujillo and Angelica Gonzales were on their way from Tucumcari to a basketball tournament in Logan on the evening of Dec. 13 when they saw smoke.

They had no idea they were soon to become heroines. They received certificates of heroism Thursday from Mayor Robert Lumpkin at a Tucumcari City Commission meeting for their actions that helped save the life of a semi-truck driver after a fatal accident.

On that Saturday in December, they thought the smoke they were seeing was from a grass fire, Trujillo said, but as they approached, they saw wreckage and burning debris.

Two semi-trucks had collided head-on. One driver, Gerald Sense, 56, of Doylestown, Ohio, was dead but the second driver was not accounted for, according to a state transportation police report.

“There was debris everywhere on fire,” Trujillo said.

Trujillo called 911 and both of the young women got out of their car. They spotted the driver in cab of the burning semi-truck and started calling out to him.

“There were other people around who were searching through the debris,” Gonzales said.

Because of the burning debris and semi-trucks going around the accident, she said, they could not get to the cab right away.

But they eventually managed to get closer to the cab. Trujillo and Gonzales were able to ask the driver, Donald Higgins of Corder, Montana, if he could get out.

“He said he was stuck, but he’d try,” Gonzales said.

It was a matter of unfastening his seat belt, Trujillo said, and the driver managed to leave the cab, Trujillo said. Then Trujillo and Gonzales moved in to guide the driver across the road.

The truck’s trailer, loaded with aerosol paint cans, was burning and the flames were coming close the semi’s cab. The cans were exploding as the flames reached them.

“The aerosol cans going off is what scared us the most,” Trujillo said.

Gonzales and Trujillo walked the driver to safety, but saw that he was bleeding badly from head and wrist wounds. They found gauze in the car and used it to apply pressure to the wounds to reduce bleeding. They kept applying pressure until emergency medical personnel arrived.

Meanwhile, Trujillo said, the semi’s cab caught fire about two minutes after they had walked Higgins to safety.

Did they make it to the tournament?

“I did,” Gonzales said. Trujillo said she dropped Gonzales off at Logan High School for the tournament and took her grandmother and niece, who were also in the car with them, home and stayed with them.

Trujillo, 18, and Gonzales, 20, are students at Mesalands Community College. Trujillo is in a pre-nursing program and Gonzales intends to major in veterinary medicine.