MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota Vikings wide receiver K.J. Osborn said he was in the “right place at the exact right time” to help save a man from a burning car.
Osborn was riding in an Uber on an expressway around 2:30 a.m. Monday in Austin, Texas, when the vehicle came upon a wrecked car. Austin police said Tuesday that the car ran into a pole and caught fire. Police said the driver “had already been removed from the vehicle” by the time officers arrived.
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Police declined to confirm the identities of the rescuers, saying only that the investigation is ongoing. The car’s driver was taken to a hospital with injuries described by police as non-life threatening. The cause of the wreck remains under investigation.
Osborn on Monday posted on Twitter a photo of himself and three others who rescued the man “from a vehicle up in flames after a bad crash.”
“Most of the time the saying goes ‘wrong place wrong time.’ But this time I believe God had me, us, at the right place at the exact right time,” Osborn wrote.
Osborn was in Austin visiting friends. He said Monday in an interview on an ESPN podcast that his Uber driver saw the crash into the pillars of the freeway overpass and pulled over. Osborn said while he approached the vehicle with caution out of concern for an explosion, the ride-share driver went right up to it and opened the door.
“I didn’t even know if he was alive when we walked up to the car,” Osborn said on the ESPN podcast. “Without that, I think that car would have burned on fire, and it would have been really tragic.”
After the man inside the car moved to the passenger’s side, Osborn, the Uber driver and two other bystanders worked to pull him out.
“That’s when I picked him up,” Osborn said. “He’s bleeding all over my shirt and everything, and I pick him up and I carry him about 10 to 15 yards so this way we’re away from the car.”
Osborn is working on finishing his master’s degree in criminal justice at Miami this offseason. He said on the ESPN podcast he hopes to work as a private investigator or in the United States Secret Service.
Osborn was a fifth-round draft pick by the Vikings in 2020 out of Miami, where he finished his college career after transferring from Buffalo.
The native of Ypsilanti, Michigan, played sparingly as a rookie before flourishing as the No. 3 wide receiver in Minnesota's offense. Osborn totaled 110 receptions for 1,305 yards and 12 touchdowns over the last two seasons.
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Associated Press Writer Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.
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