by Matt Chiappardi, The Packet Group
Two South Brunswick residents were among a group of bystanders who pulled an East Windsor patrolman from his patrol car Tuesday, shortly before it burst into flames.
Terrance Nish, 27, and his girlfriend, Shannon Scott, 25, were at her parents’ house on Old York Road for dinner when they saw the patrol car veer across Old York Road and crash into a utility pole.
”We heard the screeching of tires and saw the car hit a telephone pole and tree,” Mr. Nish said Wednesday.
According to East Windsor police, the officer — Patrolman Paul Wille, 27 — was responding to a call of an officer needing assistance with a person resisting arrest on Cedarville Road at 7:20 p.m. on Tuesday. While driving to the scene with his lights and sirens on, Officer Wille crossed from the southbound to the northbound lanes of Old York Road for “an unknown reason” and crashed.
Paramedics took Officer Wille to Capital Health Systems at Fuld in Trenton, where he was listed in good condition Wednesday, according to hospital spokesman Don MacNeill.
Police said six bystanders were at the scene when the patrolman crashed and pulled him from his patrol car shortly before it burst into flames.
Mr. Nish said that, after witnessing the crash, he “ran over there and knocked on his window, but he didn’t respond.”
”At that point, the car started to smoke and another gentleman grabbed a piece of a mailbox and broke the back windshield,” he said. “We still couldn’t get him out and we got a trailer hitch from a lady passing by, and I broke the driver-side window.”
Mr. Nish said that the officer had regained consciousness, but none of the bystanders could unfasten his seat belt.
”He gave me his knife and I cut the seat belt, and me and three other guys pulled him out,” he said. “At this point, the majority of the passenger-side of the car was on fire.”
Ms. Scott, who called 911 and then ran out to direct traffic, said that it was “only a matter of seconds” between when Mr. Nish broke the window and the officer was pulled from the car and when flames engulfed the driver-side seat.
She said the officer started to shake and that she ran back inside with her mother, Lisa, to get blankets. More police arrived at the scene as fire climbed the telephone pole, she said.
”It was a pretty intense five minutes,” she said. “You go into survival mode at that point.”
Mr. Nish said he would call his response “an instant reaction.”
”I didn’t really think about it,” he said. “It just happened.”
After the rescue, paramedics treated Officer Wille at the scene for head and neck injuries and then took him to the hospital, police said.
The accident remained under investigation Wednesday by East Windsor police and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office Serious Collision Response Team.

