‘Uncle, don’t leave me!’ - Man recalls fight to pull crash victims from burning car

While heading home from a party shortly after 2 a.m. on Sunday, Robert Johnson spotted smoke in the distance.

Initially, he thought a building was on fire. But as he approached, he saw that a vehicle was engulfed with a group of people recording the fiery scene with their smartphones. To his horror, Johnson noticed that persons were trapped inside the blazing vehicle.

"When I got close to the fire, I heard someone screaming, 'Help! Help! The car is burning!' Suh same time, we pull over to see if we assist," Johnson recounted. Despite the intense heat and flames coming from the car, Johnson and the driver of the car he was travelling in rushed to help. As he neared the front passenger side, the cries grew louder, and then he heard a voice he knew well.

"When mi look and hear the voice, mi realise seh it was my nephew, Dantae, and when him see seh a me, him seh to mi, 'Uncle don't leave mi, mi a burn up, try get mi out,'" Johnson recalled about seeing his 19-year-old nephew, Dantae Francis, in the vehicle.

With sheer determination, Johnson and the other rescuer fought against the blaze and pried open the car door just enough to pull Francis out. But his relief was short-lived, as inside the car were three more people, including his cousin, 26-year-old Tavaugn Miller.

"He was already passed out because it looked like his neck break," Johnson said. "We realise when the fire brigade come because when we reached, there was no fire brigade, and we had to do what we could to help. We get little burns on we hand, but we still pull through because we had to help them."

Johnson and the other rescuer also managed to free 33-year-old Andre Wright, the driver of the ill-fated vehicle, but he later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Another man, who was later identified as Kawayne Fearon, also perished.

"I could hear about two voices screaming, for help. But we couldn't reach them, we couldn't help them," Johnson said, tears streaming down his face. "They were fighting and shouting, trying to get out, and as the fire rise you could hear them screaming and shouting in pain," Johnson recalled.

The harrowing ordeal has left Johnson devastated, not only because of the lives lost but because bystanders chose to record instead of help.

"Nobody else never try help wi, nobody! Them just deh there a record," he said, his voice filled with anger.

"I feel really upset, but I couldn't really follow up with them because maybe if I did, mi would start run them and get caught up with dem and lose focus of helping who in the car," Johnson said.