Passerby Saves Driver’s Life; Passenger Dies

SANTA ANA —  The heroic action early Sunday of a Good Samaritan saved a woman driver, but her passenger died in a fiery three-car collision on the Santa Ana Freeway here, the California Highway Patrol said.

The CHP said the motorist who stopped to help the accident victims pulled a 49-year-old Los Angeles woman from the burning car just before it exploded, killing her 50-year-old male passenger, who was also from Los Angeles.

The woman survived with moderate burns, the CHP said, and no one else required hospital attention.

Neither of the victims was immediately identified, pending notification of family members.

The CHP identified the passerby who rescued the woman as Paul J. Hochanadel Jr., a restaurant disc jockey from Anaheim.

In an interview Sunday, Hochanadel said he was heading home from work when he came up on the collision scene on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway just north of Broadway in Santa Ana.

“I saw this fireball in the highway,” Hochanadel said. “There was fire all over the place--even running in rivulets down the street.”

The CHP said the 1:15 a.m. accident was precipitated by an unusual event as a rear wheel came off a car going northbound on the freeway.

That halted the car suddenly, the CHP said, and the car immediately following--the one containing the man and woman from Los Angeles--attempted to stop but could not. It plowed into the disabled car. Then a third car, also unable to stop, plowed into the rear of the second car, touching off the fire, the CHP reported.

Hochanadel, driving home after his nightly work of record-playing at an Orange County restaurant, happened by moments later.

“It was a horrible sight,” he recalled on Sunday afternoon. “I stopped, got out and ran over to the car that was on fire. A fellow (another passerby) was trying to get the car door open, but he wasn’t having any success. Fire was everywhere around the car. It was intensely hot. I wasn’t sure anyone was alive inside it.”

The other passerby, who was not identified, stepped back and allowed Hochanadel to try to gain entry to the fiery car.

“I kicked open a window, and right after that, a head appeared at the window, and we started pulling that person out. It turned out to be the woman. She was conscious but speaking in Spanish, and I couldn’t understand her.

“Right after we pulled the woman out, a man’s feet appeared at the window, and we were going to try to get him out, but then the car exploded. There was fire all inside the car. I could see the man trying to get out, and then he just expired. It was a terrible sight, and I can’t get it out of my mind.”

The woman was taken to UCI Medical Center, where she is recovering from moderate burns and cuts, the CHP said. The man died of burns at the scene.

Hochanadel works under the professional name of P. J. Hyland. He downplayed his rescue role, saying, “I just happened to be there on the scene.”

But in describing the fire scene, Hochanadel wondered aloud how he found it within him to approach the intense heat of the blazing car.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” he said.