The adrenaline kicked in as his foot desperately reached for the brakes and his hands turned the wheel off the highway. His mind was in absolute shock. Senior Loren Whitehurst’s car was ablaze.
“I smelt it, then I saw the flames from under the hood,” Whitehurst said. “If I was going fast, I would have crashed and the fire would have gone up all over the place and I would not be here right now.”
With almost no control of the vehicle, Whitehurst’s body took over and he dashed out of what had become a human-sized oven.
“I was driving slow so the car just eased off [and] everything stopped working. Everything stopped. The car kept moving and then just stopped. It stopped itself and I got out of the car because the fire was growing,” Whitehurst said.
After escaping what Whitehurst thought would be a fiery death, his arm reached for his phone and dialed the digits
“I called my mom before 911,” Whitehurst said. “I [told her] ‘the car is on fire’ and she told me to call 911. She told me that I asked ‘What is 911’s number’. I was in shock.”
But before lights and sirens pulled up to the scene, Whitehurst was met by someone unexpected. Senior Tara Beth Mixon saw the peculiar sight on the side of the road in rural McClellanville.
“I was going to dinner with… my boyfriend [and] as we were turning the corner to almost come up to the restaurant, I smelt this chemical, almost oily smell. The air [was] getting really hot [but] it was super cold so I was like ‘That is so weird.’ So I come around the corner and this car is like engulfed in flames and I can’t see anybody. There were no first responders there, there’s no one around the car,” Mixon said.
After calling her parents to ask for advice, they told her to stay away from the car. Since her father is the Mount Pleasant fire chief, Mixon was warned of the dangers of vehicle fires. But this did not stop her curiosity for the matter.
“I thought that there was going to be somebody dead in the car. But [then] I saw Loren just kind of standing there with his hands in his pockets and seriously I was so surprised. My heart just sank [and] I felt so, so sad for him,” Mixon said. “I just asked for a hug because [I] feel like that was all that I knew how to do in that moment, and he gave me the sweetest, tightest hug, and he just said ‘thank you.’”
With the comfort of no longer being isolated on the dark roads of McClellanville, lit only by lightning bugs and the red glow of flames, Whitehurst became more aware of the situation.
“Fire trucks came first and they came with their hoses and started spraying it down. That was the first time I had ever seen firefighters putting out a fire,” Whitehurst said.
The brief blast of water and foam uncovered the horrid reality of what could have been.
“I couldn’t really be mad about it because I’m still here. I’m grateful [to] God. That’s number one, He’s number one,” Whitehurst said.
In the wake of this harrowing event, Whitehurst was met with a community of support extending beyond what he ever could have imagined. When senior Jackson Connelly first heard about the incident, he knew exactly what he needed to do. As one of Whitehurst’s teammates on the varsity basketball team, the news got to him quickly.
“My assistant coach Lance called me and he’s like ‘Loren’s car just caught on fire’… so I called him,” Connelly said. I was like ‘We’re gonna set up a fundraiser for you’ and he tried to deny it, he didn’t want it, but he needed it.”
Within days, Connelly’s efforts raised nearly $14,000, enough for Whitehurst to buy a new car.
“I’m always here to help people and especially him. He’s such a good dude,” Connelly said. He still thanks me to this day saying like, ‘may the Lord bless you,’ and he’s super thankful about it.”
