By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Two Schofield soldiers who rescued six injured motorists on an O‘ahu highway last summer will be formally recognized today for their courage and willingness to risk their own lives to save another.
At a 9 a.m. ceremony at Tripler Medical Center, Sgt. Peter Amstutz and Spc. De’Angelo Allen, emergency medical technicians assigned to the acute care clinic at Schofield, will receive the Soldier’s Medal, the highest honor the Army can bestow for selfless acts of bravery in times of peace, from Maj. Gen. Nancy R. Adams, commanding general of the Pacific Regional Medical Command.
The honor stems from their rescue of six civilians late on the evening of July 2, 2000.
Amstutz, Allen and Amstutz’s wife, Yvonne, had been out for a late dinner at a restaurant in Mililani and were returning to their homes near Schofield. Yvonne was also in the Army at the time, a medical specialist who worked at Schofield’s family practice clinic. She was seven months pregnant and would leave the military soon.
Amstutz was driving, headed north on Kamehameha Highway. As he approached the triangle intersection before the Dole plantation, he noticed the area ahead looked brighter than it should have at 11:30 p.m.
He drove on and saw the cause of the strange lighting: a Porsche, its back-end badly mangled, was afire. Near it another car, smashed in the front, was driverless in the center of Kamehameha Highway. An unconscious man lay in the street. A dazed woman sat on the trunk.
Amstutz stopped his car about 50 feet short of the fire and left Yvonne there. As he and Allen approached the accident on foot, Amstutz was at first most concerned about the condition of the unconscious man in the street. His priorities soon shifted as he and Allen discovered three children inside the damaged car.
Time was short, Amstutz figured. The Porsche was burning hot. It was going to blow, and it might take the second car with it.
He and Allen took the children, then the man and the woman, back to Yvonne Amstutz, who administered first aid.
A military policeman, Staff Sgt. Kevin Dee, drove up from the other side of the accident and called for ambulances and a helicopter. At least one patient, a little girl with internal injuries, would need trauma care at Queens.
Meanwhile the Porsche burned hotter. It would be lunacy to approach it. But as he was removing the family from their first car, Amstutz caught something out of the corner of his eye.
A man was sitting inside, barely visible through the smoke.
“We’ve gotta get this guy out,’’ Amstutz said to Allen.
“I’ll go if you will,” Allen said.
While Yvonne Amstutz was too busy with her charges to notice, the two men approached the Porsche. Dee went with them.
The soldiers took a crowbar to the windows of the burning Porsche, running forward to strike a blow, back again to escape the heat. Finally the driver’s side window broke. Smoke poured out, and the fire inside burned hotter.
Yvonne Amstutz would be angry, later, when she learned what the father of her unborn child was doing.
“She was afraid. ,” Amstutz said. “So was I.’’
But he was also afraid that the image of the burning, unconscious man inside would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“I had to do it,” he said.
Amstutz hauled his upper body through the passenger window of the car and grabbed the man to pull him out. Allen held his friend’s legs, ready to jerk him to safety if the car blew. The driver of the Porsche wouldn’t budge. The seat belt was latched.
The hair on Amstutz’s arms and on one side of his head was burning. He found the belt, and felt along until he found the buckle. After an eternity, the buckle gave.
Amstutz fell back. Allen and Dee pulled the driver through the window, and the rescuers ran with the victim to a nearby gulch.
Then the Porsche blew.
