ROLLING HILLS ESTATESFireman Cole Gomoll cut the edge of the van’s crashed windshield with an ax Tiger Woods remained trapped inside the vehicle, with his seatbelt on and a sheet over him so as not to injure himself further from the flying debris while trying to rescue him.
Gomoll cut a long line from one end of the windshield to the other. Then he and another Los Angeles County firefighter tore the glass off.
They dropped the ax and picked up a stretcher.
Within minutes, an ambulance rushed to a trauma hospital to take in the famous patient.
It would take hours for the news to travel the world. But for Gomoll and the nine other members of Fire Station 106 in Rolling Hills Estates, California, it took just 12 minutes for the call that initially reported a traffic accident and a person trapped in a vehicle to be answered.
“He’s just another patient,” Gomoll told The Associated Press at Station 106 Friday.
Gomoll and the rest of the members of this station, including Battalion Chief Dean Douty, insisted that everyone in such a difficult situation as Woods would have received the same attention.
“I didn’t know who was in the car,” said Captain Joe Peña. He explained that a sheriff’s deputy had notified him later.
And everyone else would have had the same privacy too. The firefighters refused to reveal the conversation they were having with the athlete or the state he was in at the scene of the accident.
“His identity doesn’t really matter in what we do,” said Captain Jeane Barrett.
Still, those minutes marked a milestone in Gomoll’s career. It was the first time that the 23-year-old, a former member of the Marines, had removed a person who was trapped in a vehicle with tools in a real accident, not in practice.
Gomoll arrived at the station in August, about a mile from the crash site. He was on probation and just three weeks ago had practiced similar rescues with Barrett, who is his supervisor.
“We’ve trained for situations like this,” said Gomoll.
On Thursday, Woods was transferred from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center to Cedars-Sinai, to “continue orthopedic care and recovery,” hospital officials said. On Friday evening, a message on Woods’ Twitter account indicated that the golfer was “undergoing proceedings this morning following up on his injuries.”
“The procedures were successful and he is now recovering in good spirits,” the report adds.
Woods was injured on Tuesday when the 2021 Genesis sports car driving down a steep freeway hit a median strip in a suburban Los Angeles coastline. The vehicle entered the opposite lanes and turned over several times.
The athlete sustained multiple fractures in the right tibia and fibula. It was necessary to stabilize these injuries with a bar in the shin.
Additional trauma to the foot and ankle bones required screws and nails.