Vikings’ K.J. Osborn helps rescue man from burning car
Vikings wide receiver K.J. Osborn is being hailed as one of four heroes who helped rescue a man from a burning car on Sunday night in Austin, Texas.
Osborn, Minnesota’s No. 3 receiver the past two seasons, made note of the incident on Twitter on Monday. He also talked about it on The Adam Schefter Podcast and in an interview with The 33rd Team.
Osborn said in the interviews he was riding in an Uber with two other passengers when the driver came upon a wrecked car.
“My Uber driver just started going crazy and he’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, oh my gosh,’ ” Osborn told The 33rd Team. “I look up … and this car is, like, under the bridge, like under the pillars. It had hit a pillar and the car was in flames.”
The Uber driver stopped the car, and the passengers got out to assist. The Uber driver opened the door to the burning vehicle.
“I’m kind of thinking, ‘Should I run up to this car? Could this car blow up?’ ” Osborn said on the podcast. “I have no experience in these type of situations, and my Uber driver’s talking to the guy. We see that the guy’s alive and we’re trying to quickly come up with a game plan and we’re talking on the phone on 911.”
Osborn said the Uber driver was “brave” to open the car door, and that he then carried the driver out of the burning vehicle.
“I’m thinking it’s about to blow at any second,’’ Osborn said on the podcast. “That’s what you see in all the movies. I’m like, ‘We’ve got to get this guy out of the way.’ We got to get him out of the car, and that’s when I picked him up. He’s bleeding, he’s bleeding all on my shirt and everything. I pick him up, and I carry him about 10, 15 yards… By then, you know, the ambulance came. The firefighters got the flames to go down.”
Osborn said he was told by police that the man had suffered minimal injuries. He said he didn’t have the name of the man but has been trying to get that information so he can reach out to him.
“The cops … were just telling us how we were heroes,” Osborn told The 33rd Team. “(That) we saved this man’s life and everything like that.”
Osborn, who had 60 catches for 650 yards in his third season in 2022, put some photos of the wrecked car on Twitter on Monday @KJ_Osborn in addition to discussing the incident.
“Most of the time, the saying goes, ‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ “he wrote. “But this time I believe God had me, us, at the right place at the exact right time.”
On Tuesday, Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins addressed the incident on Twitter.
“This is totally on-brand for @KJ_Osborn,” he wrote. “Just a tremendous person and & teammate.”
