By Tim Nelson and Peter Cox

MPR.org/90.1 FM

A 35-year-old Cambridge area man is being credited with saving a 3-year-old from a truck that burned after a crash left two people dead in Anoka County Tuesday morning.

Authorities say the head-on crash happened on Viking Boulevard near 200th Avenue in Linwood shortly before 9 a.m. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, they found a pickup truck engulfed in flames.

Passer-by Thomas Rush of Grandy, Minn., witnessed the crash and went to help. Through smoke, he noticed a small child in the truck’s back seat.

“I opened up the passenger door, and the child, she was in the back seat screaming. And I jumped in there, undid her seat belt,” Rush said.

After he pulled her out and brought her to another vehicle out of the cold, he “looked back at the truck and that’s when I saw the flames had gotten into the cab and spread throughout.”

Just after the rescue, Bonnie Moyer briefly cared for the girl.

“We think she was a little bit in shock. She was crying a little bit. She had blood on her face. Otherwise she seemed perfectly okay. But the vehicles looked simply awful, completely demolished,” Moyer said.

The preliminary investigation indicates the driver of the pickup truck, a 73-year-old Columbus woman, crossed the center line into oncoming traffic. Her vehicle struck an SUV being driven by a 64-year-old man from Mound.

Anoka County Sheriff’s spokesperson Paul Sommer says the woman was the little girl’s great grandmother. Sommer said Rush deserves recognition for averting an even greater tragedy.

“Without a doubt he saved that child’s life. There’s no misunderstanding that,” Sommer said. “You know, vehicle fires spread more rapidly I think than people even realize.”

The victims’ names have not been released.