Onlookers chase down runaway Cedar Rapids car with unconscious driver

Ben McCauley didn't think. He just did what he assumed anyone would do.

McCauley, 37, of Cedar Rapids, was riding with his parole officer just before noon Thursday when a car passed by them at the intersection of Third Avenue and First Street SE. It was rolling northbound in the southbound lanes of First Street SE, at about 15 mph.

It appeared the driver was unconscious. A few people were trying to get the car to stop, and a woman was chasing after it.

Before Parole Officer Mike Skaggs had stopped his car, McCauley got out and sprinted after the wayward car. When he caught up to it around Second Avenue SE, he grabbed the car's spoiler and tried to slow it down. At 6-foot-2, 250 pounds, he was the man for the job.

Skaggs said another man stopped cars heading down Second Avenue SE, so they didn't hit the runaway car.

At some point, a third man arrived and reached in a window to put the car in park. It stopped about 20 feet from another car, without causing any damage.

“I wasn't really even thinking,” McCauley said. “I just did what I figured people would do.”

Skaggs, who had positioned his Corrections vehicle in the path of the car, in case McCauley couldn't get it stopped, went to the woman. She appeared to be in her 30s.

“She was in and out of consciousness and had some gurgling, but she was breathing and everything,” said Skaggs, who used his police radio to alert first responders.

Paramedics soon arrived and rushed the woman to a hospital. Her condition is unknown.

“Ben and the other citizens there really deserve a lot of credit,” Skaggs said. “It could have been really bad if he wouldn't have gotten traffic stopped,” Skaggs said. “Somebody could have come down Second Avenue and T-boned her.”

For his part, McCauley shrugged it off.

“Nothing I don't think anybody else would have done,” McCauley said.