The car, a Honda sedan, had been traveling south in Oldmans Township, Salem County, when the driver lost control, State Police said. It veered into the median, hit a tree, and caught fire.
Vaughan, 43, of Lower Alloways Creek, smelled gasoline when he opened his door. Running toward the wreck, he felt heat from flames as they spread over the hood and into the car's interior.
A woman standing near the car was screaming, Vaughan remembered.
"There's a boy trapped in there; I can't get him out," she said. "Please help! Please, somebody help!"
Jon Parkinson, 40, of Pennsville, also was headed home from work about 6 p.m. when he saw brake lights and "a ball of fire" springing up from the car. He drove in the breakdown lane toward the accident site and grabbed a fire extinguisher he keeps in his truck.
Inside the burning car, 9-year-old Hakeem Crain of Lanham, Md., was trapped in the backseat, his right leg broken and pinned. Flames licked the dashboard and the carpet on the driver's side, where an adult male, his body crushed by the steering wheel, sat motionless, Vaughan said.
The impact of the crash had pushed the driver's seat into the back, trapping the boy's leg. Smoke filled the interior, but Vaughan could see two other adults.
"Can anybody hear me?" Vaughan yelled, nudging the driver.
"Yes," the boy said. "I'm hurt."
Outside the car, Parkinson, who works at a warehouse, sprayed his 20-pound fire extinguisher on the front of the car, knocking the flames back. Vaughan's wife, Susan, dialed 911.
Parkinson has taken safety courses offered at his job: He is CPR certified and knows how to use a defibrillator.
Vaughan worked eight years as an emergency medical technician and a volunteer firefighter. But he hadn't responded to an emergency in 15 years; he works a white-collar job now as a project manager at Gap International, a management-consultant company in Media, Delaware County.
But as he felt through the smoky car to find the boy's seat belt, Vaughan knew it was training that guided his hands.
The boy's right femur was broken. So Vaughan grabbed the lower part of his leg and pulled hard.
The boy screamed, "It hurts! It hurts!" Vaughan wrenched the leg free.
As Vaughan gathered the boy in his arms, he saw the driver was already catching fire.
Vaughan and the woman who had earlier tried to extract the boy put him down on the grass, with Vaughan supporting his head and neck.
Parkinson, his extinguisher spent, made a last attempt to help the other three.
"Are you alright?" he screamed at the driver, reaching through the window to grab him.
The extinguisher choked the fire for 10 to 15 seconds, Parkinson said. Then the flames took over.
They moved the boy farther from the wreckage, and Parkinson pulled his 2004 Dodge Ram 1500, hazard lights flashing, diagonally across the left lane to block cars that slowly passed by the boy.
A State Police trooper raced up in a black SUV and pulled out a medical kit, handing surgical gloves to Parkinson, who was holding the boy's head.
Parkinson and Vaughan kept Hakeem talking. They asked him about the others in the car (his mother, his uncle, his mother's boyfriend). They asked about his father (at home in Maryland). They asked him about sports, how to spell his name, anything to keep him alert.
Police and fire crews arrived. When the emergency workers talked about the people in the car who didn't make it, Parkinson covered the boy's ears.
Paramedics arrived, and Parkinson stepped aside. Vaughan gave them a rundown: Broken right femur, fractured left wrist, belt burns on his torso, possible internal injuries, breathing sounds OK.
Police identified three victims, including Hakeem's mother, Jessie Jones, 27, of Lanham. Manuel Marshal, 24, and Arthur Briscoe, 38, both of Lanham, also were killed.
Parkinson and Vaughan told police what they had seen; then, after the emergency crews left, both men went home.
When Parkinson told his wife and two teenage children about the crash, his 14-year-old daughter was impressed. His 16-year-old son said simply, "Good job, Dad."
His wife asked if he was scared.
"I didn't have time to even think," he said Tuesday. "My main priority was getting that little boy out of that car because I didn't want to see him burn up."
Vaughan, who had planned to go out to dinner that night with his wife, asked if they could eat whatever was in the refrigerator at home.
That evening he prayed with his wife and children, aged 15 and 17.
Later that night, he couldn't sleep.
In his years as a paramedic, he'd never seen anything like that crash, he said. He thinks he saw one person in the backseat move when he called to them.
He wonders if he could have reached the crash site sooner. He remembers the green lights he hit leaving work and the lane he chose that helped him skirt a line of traffic.
And he thinks about Hakeem, who won't see his mother again. Vaughan's own mother died of cancer when he was 14. He's familiar with that particular pain.
"I personally would like to see him," Vaughan said of Hakeem. "But it's going to be hard for me to explain to a 9-year-old boy that I was able to save him, but I wasn't able to save his mom.
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