Jan. 31: Crash victim steals, wrecks rescuer’s car

Right before their eyes, down the dark and frigid northwestern Minnesota highway, longtime friends Chase Torgerson and Cody Charpentier saw a car fly through the air and crash into a highway median.

"Everyone all right?! Everyone all right?!" Torgerson hollered toward the mangled metal as he and Charpentier ran from their car to the crash scene shortly after 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

No, not all of the three inside were all right. And in a few minutes, Torgerson wouldn't be doing so well, either.

The 20-year-old construction worker from nearby Clearbrook, Minn., approached a man who was dangling out of two of the blown-out windows. Thanks to his National Guard training, Torgerson tended to the badly injured passenger, even putting his own gloves on the victim as gusty winds made the minus-8 temperature reading feel more like minus-34.

At the same time, his bare hand held his cell phone to his ear as he alerted 911. Help was on the way.

"Chase! Turn around! Your car!" Charpentier screamed. The next thing Torgerson knew, he said Wednesday, he was chasing on foot after his car, which suddenly had been commandeered by one of the people from the crashed car who hadn't been injured.

"What can I do?" he recalled. "There goes my car. I'm still on the line with 911."

About 800 yards down westbound Hwy. 2, Torgerson's car was rolled and totaled.

"Look what you get for your trouble," State Patrol Capt. Dick Wittenberg said of Torgerson's good deed. "You get your car stolen."

Unfortunately, Wittenberg added, this incident sends a "bad message -- don't be a good Samaritan."

Officers responding to the scene had their own excitement in making the arrests. The car thief had to be chased down on foot. With the help of a police dog, police found the driver hiding nearby under a semitrailer truck.

The badly hurt passenger whom Torgerson had comforted, Sheldon R. Schoenborn, 43, of Redby, Minn., was in stable condition Wednesday at the North Country hospital in Bemidji, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Wittenberg said all three people in the first vehicle were "heavily intoxicated" at the time.

The man Torgerson helped "was bleeding, moaning and grunting" at the scene, recalled Torgerson, who is based at Camp Ripley and is waiting to be sent overseas.

"I felt around, grabbed his leg lightly, grabbed his arms to make sure he wasn't paralyzed, but he said he could feel everything," he said.

Add it all up: Two men in jail (the slightly hurt getaway driver and a passenger), one man in the hospital with serious injuries, and a well-meaning Torgerson with a 17-year-old sedan that is "smashed pretty good." But his sense of kindness toward others remains undamaged.

Without hesitating, Torgerson said he would stop again if similar peril should unfold before him. But this time, "for sure," he said, he won't leave his keys in the car.

"I didn't know what kind of people they were," he said.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482