ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 26, 1996 TAG: 9609260059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
THE HEROIC MARINE spent a sleepless night, perhaps thinking of his son - the same age as one of the kids he saved.
The teen-agers who were rescued from their burning car on Interstate 581 want to meet the Marine they say saved their lives.
"He's why we're here today," Nicole Hicks, 19, said from her boyfriend's room at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital Wednesday morning. "We both would have burned to death."
Hicks was driving boyfriend Kevin Ballinger, 18, to a Franklin Road audio shop Tuesday afternoon to pick up his car when she lost control of her Pontiac Sunbird. She spun around in the median and wound up with her car stuck sideways under the rear axle of a moving tractor-trailer from Georgia.
The truck dragged the car more than 500 feet before both vehicles came to a halt in the southbound lane of 581 at Hershberger Road. Sparks set both the car and the truckload of rubber on fire.
Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Hall, driving downtown on Marine business, stopped and pulled the young couple from the car shortly before it was engulfed in flames. The truck driver was not injured.
Ballinger says Hall first pulled Hicks out of the driver's seat. The passenger door was crushed into the truck's back tires, and Ballinger, a big man, was sprawled between the front and back seats. He says Hall helped him get turned around and crawl out. Hall's version is that Ballinger was moving but disoriented and needed to be yanked from the car.
"I guess if he hadn't been there, we both would have died," said Ballinger, a senior at Lord Botetourt High School.
Ballinger's liver is torn.
"It's not that bad," he said. "It just heals by itself."
He expects to be released today and may return to school Friday. Both he and Hicks are cashiers at the Kroger store on Williamson Road at Hollins.
Hicks, who was charged with reckless driving by state police, doesn't remember how she drove off the road. "I remember seeing the tractor-trailer spare tire in my face," she said. "That's all I remember."
She's shaken, but other than a sore, swollen nose, she's OK. She stayed with Ballinger at the hospital Tuesday night to be sure he was OK, too.
Hicks is upset about losing Sassy, the Yorkshire terrier that was with them in the car. It belongs to Ballinger's mother. Hall says he tried to catch the dog but it kept running back to the car. "Then the flames got really bad." He believes it burned to death.
Hall was up until 4 a.m. Wednesday, unable to sleep. He called his wife in Jacksonville, N.C. Like Hicks and Ballinger, they've been together since high school. Like Ballinger, their elder son is 18 and a senior in high school.
Hall was out recruiting for the Marines at a local high school Wednesday morning. People called his recruiting station talking about awards and offering congratulations. He's overwhelmed, tired.
Hall says he wants to meet the young couple, too. But first he needs some sleep.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB