Home » Latest » U.S. » N.J. State Troopers pull man from fiery truck seconds before it explodes

N.J. State Troopers pull man from fiery truck seconds before it explodes

5

InfoSearched 74 0 Twitter, U.S.

9.5

SaveSavedRemoved 0

A New Jersey trooper’s body camera caught the exact instant a burning tractor-trailer went up in flames — just seconds after two men dragged the driver clear.

Around 3:30 p.m. on Monday, March 2, New Jersey State Trooper Robert Tarleton was running a routine traffic stop on Interstate 287 North in Bridgewater Township, Somerset County, when a tractor-trailer veered off the highway and into the express lanes. The rig struck a guardrail and then a concrete bridge abutment before erupting into fire. Tarleton, just nine months out of the police academy, sprinted toward the wreckage with his body camera rolling — and found he wasn’t the only one already there.

• Off-duty Lieutenant Edward Ryer, who witnessed the crash while driving home from work, was already at the truck’s cab trying to free the driver through thick smoke and heat.
• Tarleton and Ryer together pulled 63-year-old driver Ron Hickman clear of the cab moments before the truck exploded in a fireball captured on Tarleton’s body-worn camera.
• Hickman suffered only minor injuries and was taken to Morristown Medical Center; his family said he may have suffered a medical episode before the crash.

Seconds That Mattered

By the time Tarleton reached the burning cab, Lieutenant Ryer was already working to pull Hickman loose, having pulled over the moment he saw the truck leave the highway. The two officers hauled the driver away from the flames under conditions Tarleton’s own body camera shows clearly — heavy smoke, intense heat, and a rig fully engulfed within moments of impact. Neither trooper waited for backup before moving in.

Tarleton radioed dispatch for emergency services as he ran toward the wreck, giving responders a head start before he and Ryer ever touched the cab. That call, paired with the rescue itself, is the kind of split-second judgment troopers train for but rarely have to use in real time on an interstate express lane.

The Explosion Caught on Camera

The truck detonated behind the two men almost immediately after they got Hickman clear — the blast visible in Tarleton’s body-cam footage as a wall of fire consuming the cab they’d just left. Neither trooper sustained serious injury.

Hickman’s family said he may have suffered a medical episode just before the crash — the same moment that put him seconds from being trapped inside a burning cab on I-287.

The footage underscores how narrow the margin was: the fireball erupted where Tarleton and Ryer had been standing only moments earlier, on a stretch of I-287 that carries heavy commuter traffic through Somerset County every afternoon.

A Nine-Month Rookie and an Off-Duty Lieutenant

What stands out in the account is the pairing — a trooper barely out of the academy working alongside a lieutenant who happened to be commuting home at the wrong, or right, moment. New Jersey State Police leadership has repeatedly highlighted rank-and-file actions like this one, the same instinct that shows up when officers elsewhere step up under pressure, as seen in incidents like the command decisions NYPD supervisors have faced in high-stress moments on the job. Ryer’s decision to stop and act, rather than simply call it in, is what put him at the cab before Tarleton even arrived.

Hickman was transported to Morristown Medical Center for evaluation after the rescue. His injuries were described as minor given the severity of the crash and the explosion that followed within seconds of his removal from the truck.

Tarleton’s body camera did what it’s designed to do — document a routine shift that turned, in the space of a radio call, into a rescue with almost no margin for error. The footage of the fireball erupting right behind the two men is now the record of exactly how close it came.