Mike McQueary praised for helping person trapped in car crash, report says
Former Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary helped rescue an entrapped person after a two-vehicle crash near Harrisburg, according to a USA Today report.
The ex-coach, a witness for the prosecution in the Jerry Sandusky and Graham Spanier trials, told the national news organization that he “did what anyone else would do.”
He reportedly stopped Thursday on Route 581 after seeing an SUV flip and crossed traffic to help those involved in the crash. He and another man then unbuckled and pulled an injured woman, who was bleeding from a head wound, out of the vehicle and helped stabilize her on a stretcher with first responders.
“You don’t think. You just try do the right thing,” he told the USA Today in a phone call.
McQueary has been under fire from some for several years due the actions he took in 2001 when he said he witnessed Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers with a young boy. He was a graduate assistant at the time and later testified that he saw Sandusky sexually abusing the boy.
He did not intervene in the 2001 incident and instead reported what he saw to Joe Paterno. McQueary testified that he later discussed the incident with former Penn State administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment charges in March. Former Penn State president Graham Spanier was found guilty of the same charge after McQueary, Curley and Schultz testified for the prosecution.
McQueary sued the university for defamation and as a whistleblower after he was released from his contract when Bill O’Brien was hired as the new coach following Joe Paterno’s firing and 2012 death. The trial in that case happened in November 2016. McQueary was awarded $12.3 million.
He told the USA Today that despite being vilified by some people, most treat him well.
This story was originally published April 11, 2017 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Mike McQueary praised for helping person trapped in car crash, report says."