A crash, flames and a hammer: 2 SC college students saved a disaster from becoming a tragedy

Joseph Pope and Charles Segars couldn’t care less about the awards, the interviews, the accolades, or that word: Hero.

But in the wee hours of a Saturday morning last fall, they cared about the smoke rising from the black Nissan car that crashed on a Clemson back road. They cared about who might be inside. They cared enough to stop.

“I did what I thought was correct and I thought any reasonable person would have done. I really don’t feel special about it,” Pope said. “I think of myself as being a helper, just trying to help people in any way I can.”

Pope and Segars, both juniors and roommates at Clemson University, were driving home in Segars’ Toyota Tacoma truck from a friend’s house around 1 a.m. Sept. 2, 2023.

Not too far ahead of them were Anderson Jones and Sofia Vega. A police incident report from that night indicates Jones was suspected of being under the influence of alcohol while driving. The car was speeding and never slowed as it approached and blew threw the stop sign at the three-way intersection, the police report said. The car crashed into the embankment.

The driver of a public bus stopped nearby saw it happen and called 911.

Not long after, Pope and Segars arrived.

“Dang, this is a pretty big deal,” Segars thought as they approached the scene. The two were “in shock, couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“Let’s just see if everybody’s all right,” Pope remembered saying.

Segars approached the bus driver while Pope rushed to the crashed car.

Pope could see that the driver, Jones, was trapped inside but couldn’t get to him. Segars handed him a hammer from the truck — part of a tool kit he’d gotten as a high school graduation gift — and Pope busted out the driver’s window. The roommates pulled the 18-year-old to safety.

But the passenger, Vega, remained trapped in the car and unconscious as smoke was giving way to flames.

They broke the passenger-side window and pulled Vega to safety.

Jones was arrested at the scene, and 18-year-old Vega was airlifted to a hospital. For weeks, Pope and Segars had little to no information about her condition. She broke numerous bones and suffered internal injuries, according to media reports.

“I’ve thought about the girl just because she was the innocent one that got thrown in there unexpectedly,” Segars said. “I will every now and then just wonder how she’s doing.”

It wasn’t until the rescuers were presented the Clemson Police Department’s Life-Saving Award at a Clemson City Council meeting in November that Pope and Segars met Vega, who bore a crutch and a boot on one leg.

Their actions that night led to a swarm of recognition for Pope, 21, and Segars, 20, including most recently Pope’s acceptance of a prestigious Boy Scout award typically given to fewer than four people a year.

Pope, an avid outdoorsman who studies mechanical engineering, is a 2021 graduate of Columbia’s Heathwood Hall Episcopal School.

At a recent ceremony at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Pope, an Eagle Scout, was presented the Boy Scout’s Honor Medal with Crossed Palms, a rare honor given for life-saving actions that are taken with a risk of harm to oneself.

“Joseph has been a Scout through and through his whole life,” Doug Stone, the Scout Executive of the Indian Waters Council of the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement. “He just knew what to do and had the courage to do it.”

Both Pope and Segars have been recognized by the city and university police departments, and Segars, a Sumter native and graduate of Wilson Hall High School, was honored by the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity.

“We were just being good people. I don’t know if ‘hero’ is the right word,” Segars said.

Pope said he’s ready to move on from the attention and the praise.

“I’m a quiet person,” he said. “I just kind of say ‘thank you’ and try to move on and try to not make people bring it up again. I don’t like that word (hero), because I’m just a normal person doing a good thing, and that’s about it. …

“I’m glad God put me and Charles in a position to help other people out.”