Bobby Jack McGuire helped to rescue Joshua L. Boyett from burning, Tallahassee, Florida, January 27, 2003. Boyett, 19, was unconscious in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck after an accident at night in which the vehicle left the road, struck a tree, and caught fire in its engine compartment. McGuire, 70, retired military officer, who lived nearby, heard the accident and ran to the scene with a fire extinguisher, which he used against the flames but to little effect. His son, who also lived nearby, had responded to the scene and attempted to open the truck’s doors, but they were jammed shut. After the son climbed into the bed of the truck and broke out its back window, McGuire joined him there. Together they reached through the window, grasped Boyett, and pulled him from the cab as flames were starting to enter it. After extinguishing flames on Boyett’s trousers, the men took him from the pickup bed to the ground, then carried him away from the truck, the cab of which was shortly engulfed by flames. Boyett required hospital treatment for burns to his left arm and leg and other injury. He recovered.
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76666-8766Obituary
Bobby Jack McGuire died on April 14, 2012, at his home in Tallahassee, Fla. He was born on Dec. 31, 1932, in Oconee County, S.C., and moved to Tallahassee in 1953.
He served his country and the Army and the Florida Army National Guard for more than 20 years before he retired. He was a veteran of the Korean War and, throughout his military career, served his country in the Airborne Infantry.
He had a long career in law enforcement that included the Florida Highway Patrol, for which he served as a pilot and flight instructor. He also worked for the Tallahassee Police Department, as well as the Leon County Sheriff’s Department.
For many years, he was superintendent in construction, responsible for building nursing homes and other building in and around Tallahassee. He was most notably known for his heroism when he and his son, Scott, saved a young man from a burning vehicle in 2003 on Old Bainbridge Road in Tallahassee. McGuire received the Carnegie Medal the following year.
(Edited from an obituary in the Tallahassee Democrat, April 18, 2012.)