Daniel Lee Ables helped to save Loretta K. Mittan and Mary L. Marriott from burning, Los Angeles, California, June 6, 1964. At night on an eight-lane highway a speeding vehicle struck and badly damaged the rear end of a four-door sedan containing Mrs. Mittan, 63, and Mrs. Marriott, 55, who were unable to open the jammed doors. Gasoline from the ruptured fuel tank caught fire, and flames broke out on the sedan as it slid to a stop against the highway’s median strip, blocking one lane of traffic. Ables, 18, schoolboy, who was accompanied by Jerry W. Plunkett and Phillip S. Snowden, drove his automobile across the traffic lanes and stopped at the side of the highway. All three youths ran to the burning sedan. As flames rose eight feet at the rear of the automobile and along the driver’s side., Snowden braced his knee against the other side of the vehicle and jerked open the front door. The sedan was filled with dense smoke, flames having burned through the trunk compartment and into the back of the rear seat. Heat was intense. Snowden extended his head and shoulders into the front compartment and pulled Mrs. Mittan from the sedan. Ables then leaned into the vehicle and removed Mrs. Marriott. Plunkett extended his upper body into the sedan and searched the front compartment but found no one else. He unlocked the rear door and probed the floor and seat there. Finding no one, Plunkett aided Ables and Snowden in taking the two women across the highway. The flames consumed all but the metal parts of the sedan.
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