By Ashley Booker
The Hutchinson News
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Monday, Aug. 3, felt like a normal day off for Lanny Crupper.
He was heading toward his sister’s home on Halstead Street in Hutchinson when he saw a vehicle nose down in a ditch across the street.
At that moment, this registered nurse’s training as a previous Reno County District 8 volunteer firefighter and EMT instructor at Hutchinson Community College kicked in. He knew he had to help.
Crupper, 63, of Hutchinson was either the first or second person there to find Melva Cummings, 79, of Hutchinson trapped inside her car after hitting a driveway culvert at 3503 N. Halstead Street.
“That culvert, it’s kind of down in the ditch. The way she hit it was like running directly into a concrete wall,” Crupper said.
His adrenaline kicked in as he went to help her. After he got to her, the Hutchinson Police Department, Fire Department and EMS came.
Cummings was pinned in her car for 45 minutes, and after methods weren’t working to get her out, he, Officer Grant Ingram and either Capt. Darren Schrock, Brian Rife or Joshua Weber with HFD pulled at the heavy crushed door with their hands and pried it open.
Officer Matthew Rucker was on scene nearby to help as the other men pried open the “pretty rough-looking” car door.
Although their strength was enough to open the door, Crupper says the Jaws of Life would have been next to get her out. It took 45 minutes before she was freed from the vehicle.
“You just do what you have to do,” Crupper said. He doesn’t remember it taking 45 minutes, but “time kind of stands still in a time like that. It’s hard to gauge.”
Crupper says them prying open the door probably looked more amazing than it really was.
Deputy Fire Chief Doug Hanen said each person of the three-person fire crew had their own responsibility. One was inside the car, another outside of it and one was helping bring Cummings out.
When asking the crew about the accident later, they responded by saying, “none of us really did anything extraordinary.”
Although Ingram, Schrock, Rife and Weber were just doing their job, which is equally heroic, it’s not every day an off-duty registered nurse is there to help.
Crupper had been identified as an off-duty paramedic at the time, and admits he didn’t want to correct anyone because there were more important things at hand.
Even though it’s been years since Crupper has used his EMT and volunteer firefighter training, he said it came back to him as if he were using it just yesterday.
“I think when you train to do stuff like that it’s always in the back or your mind -- you never forget it and it’s always there,” Crupper said.
Crupper graduated from nursing school at HCC after he instructed EMT classes there. Although he isn’t employed now after breaking his hip a week-and-a-half after Cummings’ accident, he had been a traveling registered nurse at the time.
He suspects he will be looking for work soon after he’s able to be mobile again. He is also a co-owner of Crupper’s Corner, Inc., in Hutchinson.
Rucker said Cummings is lucky that Crupper was nearby. It’s “very convenient timing if you’re going to wreck a vehicle that badly,” he said.
“It really scares you after it’s all over and it all sinks in what could have happened,” Crupper said. “It’s sure good to hear that she’s doing better.”
Crupper said he was happy to help and what he did “really wasn’t that big a deal.”
Although this good deed wasn’t a big deal to him, his wife Peggy says he does this kind of thing as often as he can.
“It’s not the first time he’s stopped and helped somebody,” she said, mentioning he’s helped people after they struck a deer and he once helped a woman after she fell asleep behind the wheel.
“He’s one of those kinds of guys,” she said.
___
(c)2015 The Hutchinson News (Hutchinson, Kan.)
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.