Hero in the Dark: Marine Saves Stranger’s Life on Highway
Chaos erupted on a San Diego highway. Headlights flashed, horns blared, and cars sped past as two people lay injured on the asphalt after a motorcycle crash. One of them, Melinda Gurrola, was bleeding heavily — her leg severed in the collision. Every second counted.
Then a hero appeared.
Sammuel Goodwin, a hospital corpsman with the 1st Marine Regiment, saw the wreck unfold. Without hesitation, he grabbed his medical bag and two tourniquets and sprinted across four lanes of traffic, weaving between speeding cars to reach the victims.
Racing Against Time
When Goodwin reached Melinda, she was fading fast. “The belt wasn’t stopping the arterial bleed,” he recalled.
Relying on his training, he applied a tourniquet, packed a second wound with gauze, and carefully wrapped her severed leg in hopes surgeons could reattach it. For 22 intense minutes, he worked under the glow of headlights, kneeling on the asphalt as chaos swirled around him.
Paramedics eventually arrived to take over — but Goodwin had stabilized Melinda enough to give her a fighting chance.