By Laura Albanese
Newsday
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
MINEOLA, N.Y. — The off-duty New York Police Department firearms instructor who helped pull a disabled woman from her car seconds before it was struck by a train said Friday that the rescue was part of her training and she did what anyone in law enforcement would have done.
Randi LoCicero, 34, and her husband, Anthony, 33, a Franklin Square fire chief, pulled a 63-year-old woman to safety after her car stalled on a strip of Long Island Rail Road tracks in Mineola.
At her Garden City home, LoCicero said she and her husband have often been on the front lines trying to avert disaster.
“Usually we’re there after the fire,” she said. “But we’re used to being there.”
Still, she said, “I’ve never seen a car get hit by a train before. You see it on TV, but there’s no comparison to watching it while it happens.”
On Thursday afternoon, the couple was driving through Mineola when a woman approached their rescue vehicle and told them a woman needed help.
“Anybody in the fire department or police department would have done the exact same thing,” LoCicero said.
The woman, who was on crutches, had to be dragged out of the car, LoCicero said. The train hit about ten seconds later.
LoCicero said another man helped them, but left after the accident. The woman was “in shock,” LoCicero said, and worried about her pocketbook and crutches. She declined medical attention and waited for her daughter to pick her up.
The car is registered to Patricia Rech, of Floral Park. A security guard at her apartment building said Rech wasn’t taking any visitors.
Both LoCicero and her husband work for the fire department and both are volunteer ambulance medical technicians.
“You keep a cool head,” LoCicero said. “Being a cop, the first thing is to deal with the situation at hand and work for the best possible outcome.”