Passerby’s 2nd rescue in weeks: He pulls Northern California woman from submerged car

A woman whose car flipped into a Northern California irrigation ditch on Monday was rescued by a stranger — who, the CHP said, was also first on the scene at a fatal crash last month.

Monday’s crash happened around 12:20 p.m. on Larkin Road, in an agricultural area south of the Sutter County community of Live Oak, according to the California Highway Patrol report. A sedan driven by a 75-year-old Live Oak woman went off the road and landed upside-down in 2 feet of water in the ditch.

The crash was witnessed by a 6-year-old Marysville girl who was playing outside while her parents visited a home’s residents. She told the adults, and her parents — Cyle Johnson and Ashley Martin — ran out to give aid.

The driver was unresponsive, trapped with her head under the water. A passerby provided a knife to cut the seatbelt, and the three pulled the woman to safety. She was taken to a hospital where she was treated for minor injuries, the CHP said.

The CHP noted that Johnson, 28, had been first on the scene of a fatal crash around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 13, when a wrong-way driver on Highway 99 struck another vehicle near the Sutter County community of Pleasant Grove.

The wrong-way driver, a 25-year-old Marysville woman, died at the scene, but Johnson gave aid to the other driver, a 46-year-old Yuba City man who suffered major injuries. That victim was recently released from the medical center at the University of California, Davis, the CHP said.