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Man Searches for Stranger Following U.S. 131 Crash

Posted at 10:57 AM, Feb 26, 2014
and last updated 2014-02-26 20:41:47-05
dorr crash

Friday, February 21, 2014

ALLEGAN COUNTY, Mich. (Feb. 26, 2014) — Thanks to car troubles, a West Michigan man was at the right place at the right time and helped a stranded, injured driver on the highway.

Now he wants to know how the woman is doing, but he doesn’t have much information to go on.

“Stars aligned for a reason, who knows?” said Nate Koehn.

Koehn’s pickup died along a stretch of US-131 in Allegan County late February 20.He and his friend were on their way to pick up the truck around 10 a.m. February 21, but didn’t make it much past the Dorr exit. “We could just see this pure wall of white,” said Koehn.

They slowed down and noticed several slide-offs. One of them was a car hung up on the cable barriers. “I walked up to the window and this girl was in there and kind of crying a little bit,” he explained. “She said her neck and head were hurting.”

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Nate Koehn, Good Samaritan at Crash Scene

The car doors were all jammed and the windows broken. So, Koehn said, he did all he could really do at that time. “I walked to the passenger side, grabbed a hold of her hand and said ‘I’m not letting go until you get some help.’”

Other drivers also stopped and brought blankets to try to keep the woman warm. It took emergency crews about 45 minutes to get to them because of all the accidents along that stretch of highway that day.

Now, Koehn wants to know how the woman is doing. All he knows is that her name is Lauren, she’s from Cascade, and shewas driving to Three Rivers that day.

“I know she was in a lot of pain; it took a while to get her out.”

Koehn says he doesn’t think he did anything special that day, just helped out someone in distress.

Police tell us they responded to so many accidents Friday, February 21. Without an incident number, there will be no way to track down this particular accident.