SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- When Mike Erlenback woke up in a hospital bed after a crash last week on West Seneca Turnpike in the Valley, he had no idea where he was or how he got there.
Erlenback, 22, of Nedrow, was driving home from work shortly before midnight April 24 when he lost control of his car at a high rate of a speed and crashed into cones on the Turnpike, he said. As he slammed on his brakes, a neighbor watching television inside a nearby apartment heard the car crash and ran outside to help.
The neighbor, Sean Danboise, yelled to his mother to call 911 while he tried to get to the driver.
"He's laying there limp," Danboise said the night of the crash.
The car was smoking and the doors were locked. Inside, airbags surrounded Erlenback as he sat unconscious, with his head down and still buckled. Danboise said he didn't know the driver, but tried to do everything he could to help him.
"I smashed the back passenger window with a rock," Danboise said. He picked that window so glass didn't hit the man.
Once the window was broken, he reached in, unlocked the door and climbed in the back seat. Danboise then reached over and unbuckled Erlenback.
Danboise said he and another man, whom he did not know, helped pull the driver out of the smoking car. Once the driver was on the ground, Danboise was relieved to find a pulse.
Emergency crews arrived quickly. American Medical Response ambulance took Erlenback, still unconscious, to Upstate University Hospital.
"The next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital," Erlenback said.
He was told he had been in a bad crash and that he was in the hospital. Then, he saw the article describing how Danboise, 21, ran to help him. Erlenback reached out to The Post-Standard | syracuse.com because he wanted to thank the man, who he says saved his life.
"I want to let him know I appreciate his actions," Erlenback said. "I want to meet him and offer him dinner, and maybe even form a new friendship."
What Danboise did that night, Erlenback said, "isn't something you wipe off your shoulder. I had to let him know I've been thinking of him every day."
Erlenback was able to talk to Danboise on the phone briefly early Tuesday from his hospital bed at Upstate University Hospital's Community Campus in Onondaga. The two plan to eventually meet and shake hands, Erlenback said.
Looking back, Erlenback describes his actions a week ago as "stupid."
He remembers driving home from St. Camillus Health & Rehabilitation Center, where he works as a janitor. He was traveling the 30-mph speed limit in his 2013 red Dodge Avenger when he approached a hill on West Seneca Turnpike and decided to "hit the gas."
"I was going pretty fast," he said. "I had the car topped out at 95 mph at the bottom of the hill."
As he sped down the hill on the Turnpike in Syracuse's Valley section, his car struck construction cones.
"I hit the brakes so hard, the wheels locked up," he said.
Erlenback thinks his car slowed down to 65 to 70 mph as he hit the brakes, but the car slid.
"I remember hitting rubble and the floor board pushed up," he said.
The car slid along the Turnpike, past Hopper Road and into a pile of debris at the intersection of Barnes Avenue. Erlenback remembers those last moments as if they happened in slow motion.
Then everything went dark, as he lay unconscious in the car.
At the hospital, he remembers having X-rays taken before he was released at 4 a.m. April 25 -- just hours after the crash -- from Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse.
He couldn't believe he had escaped the crash with just a few scratches. But then the pain set in and Erlenback said he could barely move. Later Tuesday, the hospital called to say the X-ray showed he had a broken shoulder blade. He lay on his back, unable to turn in bed or walk.
On Wednesday, he called for an ambulance and went to Upstate University Hospital's Community campus. There, he learned he also had three fractured bones in his left foot and two fractured bones in his right foot, he said.
Erlenback remains at Upstate's Community campus, but hopes to soon be able to go to a rehabilitation center to begin physical therapy.
Syracuse police have not commented on the crash, nor provided the accident report. However, Erlenback says he was not ticketed and had insurance for his car, which was totaled in the crash.
He called his actions to speed as "stupid" and knows that although he is in pain, he is lucky. He also says he is thankful to those who came to his aid that night.
"I learned it's not worth going fast like that," Erlenback said from his hospital bed. "I won't be doing that again."
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