Employee’s heroic actions help save a woman and her young children

A Tremco Weatherproofing Technologies, Inc. employee’s quick thinking helped prevent what could have been a very tragic situation.

The morning of November 20, 2018, Freddie Marin, a WTI Foreman in the West Central region was on his way to a job site in the Minneapolis area, when he noticed the car driving in front of him had lost its left front wheel.

“I was driving on the highway during rush hour and was at the point where two lanes turn into three,” explained Freddie. “I saw this car come across to the far-left lane when all of the sudden the front driver’s side of the car suddenly dropped down. It had lost its front wheel.”

He noticed the woman driving had children in the car. Thinking quickly, Freddie brake-checked his vehicle and then started blocking the third lane of traffic because the shoulder beside the median was only a couple of feet wide. This left the woman’s car sticking out into traffic. The dump truck behind him followed Freddie's lead and started blocking the second lane of traffic. “We made our own little barricade to prevent any other vehicles from running into her.”

At a speed of 70 miles per hour, the vehicle with the mother and her three children that had lost the left front wheel careened into the concrete barrier on the driver’s side, setting off the airbags and shattering the windows on the driver’s side of the car.

Not knowing what he would find, Freddie ran over to see if everyone was ok. Thankfully there were no physical injuries to anyone in the vehicle but everyone, as you can imagine, was pretty shaken up, including Freddie and the dump truck driver who said it was a very scary situation.  “Surprisingly there was very little glass inside the vehicle. The air bags must have acted as a shield to protect those little babies in the back from the glass,” said Freddie.

Knowing the safest place for mother and her children was to be off the busy, now traffic-snarled highway, Freddie loaded the family into his truck, to get them to safety. “Thankfully I drive a ¾-ton truck with an oversized cab,” explained Freddie. “I was able to put them in and get up to the next exit where her husband was able to meet them.”

This is such an amazing example of the WTI/Tremco spirit and culture! Jason Bina, Freddie’s supervisor said afterwards, “I just can't be prouder of how he handled the situation!” All of us could not agree more with Jason’s sentiment, we are all so proud of Freddie and glad that he is on the WTI team!

Interested in becoming part of such an amazing team? Learn more about a career with WTI.