A 62-year-old man from New Jersey burned to death inside his SUV after it got stuck in a snowbank. Police in Little Ferry, which is about ten miles northwest of New York City, were called to Losen Slote Creek Park and found the driver stuck in the snow at the bottom of an embankment.
The driver was rocking his SUV back and forth and revving the engine to try to break the vehicle free. Officers approached the 62-year-old and told him to lay off the gas because they were going to call for a tow truck.
The man ignored the officers and continued to rev the engine. As they were walking back to their patrol car to call the tow truck, they heard a popping noise and looked back to see that the vehicle had caught on fire.
"So quickly that the car was fully engulfed," one of the officers told WNBC. "I didn't expect it to go up that fast. When you see videos of it slowly, car fires maybe 20 minutes or something. It just happened, one-two-three."
The officers rushed back to the vehicle to help the man. The doors were locked, and the officers had to break the rear passenger window. By then, it was too late, and the SUV had become engulfed in flames, forcing the officers to retreat until the fire department arrived. The smoke was so thick that the officers couldn't see the driver.
Investigators with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office are trying to determine what caused the SUV to burst into flames.
Photo: Little Ferry Police Department