Print edition: 
If a hero is someone who risks life and limb to save another person, then Timothy McCarthy, 22, qualified Tuesday morning.
McCarthy ran toward a burning car that had crashed at about 1 a.m. Tuesday in Overland Park. He pulled the driver, who was on fire, out of the vehicle. Using his hands, McCarthy beat out the flames that were dancing on the driver's head and shoulders.
However, two people died in the fiery one-car crash that happened on West 151st Street in Overland Park. The driver that McCarthy pulled from the wreckage was taken to a hospital in critical condition. Police have not released the names of the victims. However, teenagers who came to leave flowers at the accident scene Tuesday afternoon said the two who were killed were seniors at Olathe South High School.
McCarthy, of Overland Park, sustained severe burns on his right hand, but he's not so sure he feels like a hero.
"In some sense, yes," he said. "But in another sense I don't consider myself a hero because the other two didn't get out."
The car was traveling at high speeds eastbound at about 1:10 a.m. when left it the roadway just east of Metcalf Avenue, striking a power pole and clipping the garage of a house, police said. The car then rolled several times and burst into flames as it came to rest in a yard.
McCarthy was sitting on his couch talking with a cousin when he heard squealing tires, a bang and then an explosion.
He could see the fiery wreck from his house and called 911 as he ran toward the burning car.
"I couldn't just stand there and watch somebody burn to death," he said.
He approached the car and saw movement on the driver's side of the front seat. The car was sitting upright with the door closed.
"I reached inside the car, grabbed him by the arms and pulled him out the window," McCarthy said. "He was on fire."
McCarthy tried to encourage the driver to "drop and roll," but it didn't do any good. He began working furiously to put the fire out.
"I just ripped off his sweatshirt and both his shirts," he said.
At that point he heard some smaller explosions coming from the burning car and knew he had to get the driver farther away from the vehicle.
"I actually got him to stand up — I don't know how," McCarthy said. "I got him to the edge of the sidewalk and that's where he lay until the police arrived."
McCarthy suffered burns on both hands in the rescue, but the right hand was burned the worst. He was treated at a hospital and released and continued treatment at a physician's office later that afternoon.
McCarthy expects to make a full recovery from his injuries, but the ordeal has deeply affected him. He's been given a week off from his job as a service technician for a vending company.
Police told McCarthy that the car was burning so fiercely that he couldn't have saved the others even if he wanted to.
"He was the only one I saw, so that was my first priority," McCarthy said. "I didn't see anybody else. There were just flames."
