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Caught on Tape: Trucker Saves Driver Who Suffered Heart Attack
posted 03/18/09 6:05 pm
ABC 7 News - Caught on Tape: Trucker Saves Driver Who Suffered Heart Attack
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WEIRTON, W.Va. - A Pennsylvania truck driver is being called a hero, credited with saving a woman's life after she suffered a medical emergency behind the wheel of her car. And the entire incident was caught on tape.

George Lantzy, a truck driver from Monroeville, Penn., says he was driving along US 22 in West Virginia when he noticed a white car weaving in and out of the eastbound lanes.

As other drivers pulled over and tried to jump out and stop the car, Lantzy said he knew something was very wrong and jumped into action.

"When I was coming up alongside of it, I looked over, that's when I seen [the driver] slumped over the steering wheel, and that's when I realized there was someone in the car," Lantzy recalled. "So, instead of bumping her off the road, I figured I'll get up in front of her and try stopping her that way." 



"I am no hero," truck driver George Lantzy said. "I did what I had to do."



The car's driver, Joanne Haplin, of Steubenville, Ohio, had suffered a heart attack and was apparently unconscious while travelling down the road.

Weirton police Ofc. Tony Apesos was patrolling the area. His dash camera caught the entire incident on tape.

"A tractor-trailer come by, got in front of her vehicle, lined his truck up exactly in front of hers, hit his brakes to slow her down, to have her [car] hit the back of his rig," Ofc. Apesos recalled.

Lantzy denies he acted heroically: "I don't have a cape, I don't wear a mask, I don't leap tall buildings in a single bond. I'm no hero," he said. "They are saying: 'Hero this, hero that.' That's a pretty word to throw out, I guess, but that's not me. I am no hero, and I did what I had to do."

Ofc. Apesos appears to disagree. "If he would just kept on going, she would have probably went across the center median, into the westbound lane, and would have had a head-on collision," he said. "It was a big miracle."

Both Apesos and Lantzy say they've spoken to Haplin and she's doing just fine. She had emergency surgery that day to have a stent put in and is now recovering at home.

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