Kristyn Dominy, 22, was driving home from her grandmother's house on Monday with her 5-month-old daughter when a car approached from behind.
"As I was going home, an older jeep came up behind me pretty fast and got right behind me," Dominy told ABCNews.com. "Then, they went around me and passed me on a double line. And as she was passing me, she flicked me off."
Dominy said she was "irritated" by the woman's action, since Dominy was going the speed limit.
"I noticed there was a child in the car and thought, 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe she's driving like this with a child in the back seat,'" she said.
When the car passed her, Dominy noticed one of the doors was held to the car with a rope and that a tail light was out.
The jeep sped up behind a truck pulling a boat and weaved in and out of the opposite lane, looking for an opportunity to pass the truck.
"Finally, she went around the truck, but when she sped up, I saw a bunch of black smoke come out and I remember thinking it was an awful lot of smoke to be the exhaust," Dominy said. "I thought, 'That car looks like it's about to blow up.'"
"Thirty seconds later, we came around the curve and her car was on the side of the road up in flames," she said.
Dominy saw the woman was struggling to get her little girl out of her car, but that the 5-year-old was stuck in the seatbelt.
"I pulled over as fast as I could," Dominy said. "The back of the mom's hair was on fire and her clothes were on fire a little bit, but I don't think she realized it because she was freaking out so much."
When Dominy and the woman were able to get the child out of the car, the little girl's clothes were on fire so Dominy said she had her get on the ground and roll around to put the flames out. She got the pair into her car and drove away from the fire.
Dominy described the commotion in the back of her car: "They were screaming and I called 911, but they're screaming so they made my baby start crying. So they were all screaming in the back seat."
She was close to home, so Dominy took them there to wait for the ambulance. Dominy said the little girl had "pretty severe burns" and that the mother had burns too, but "not nearly as bad as the little girl."
They were rushed to the hospital, and Dominy has not heard from them since. A paramedic told her that the mother was released from the hospital on Tuesday and that the little girl remained hospitalized in serious condition.
Posts
