An outpouring of aid for van fire victim Paralyzed Henrico man who was rescued from vehicle also receives money, 2 wheelchairs
Hayssam "Ali" Agharaad escaped death five years ago when he was shot during an armed robbery while working at a store in South Richmond.
Although the bullet severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down, the father of five felt God was watching over him.
That feeling was reaffirmed Wednesday when he was saved from his burning vehicle by several passers-by.
Agharaad, 43, was driving across the Edward E. Willey Bridge around 11:30 a.m. when he noticed smoke coming from his wheelchair-modified van. He pulled over to the shoulder and waved out the window for help, but no one was stopping.
He said he thought about letting himself fall out of the van at one point but feared a vehicle would run over him.
Computer-systems engineers Chad Christianson and Joel Woodward were on their way to visit a client when they saw Agharaad's van.
"We noticed a fellow hanging out the window with smoke coming out of the cabin of his van," Christianson, 30, said.
Unable to reach an emergency dispatcher by cell phone and noticing that nobody else was stopping to help, they decided to turn around.
When they reached the van, a female passer-by had managed to pull Agharaad out beside the van. Noticing that the smoke was getting thicker, Christianson carried the 170-pound man 150 feet away.
Woodward, 27, and another man moved him again and started back to retrieve Agharaad's $5,000 motorized wheelchair when the van went up in flames. He'd just finished paying for the used van he bought for $12,500 about three years ago.
The tires and battery exploded as fire consumed the van and the wheelchair inside. Traffic continued to whiz by as the wind shifted and sent black smoke across the bridge, Christianson said.
"If someone had stopped sooner than us, they could have saved this guy the hassle of getting a new wheelchair," Christianson said.
Christianson and Woodward stayed with Agharaad until his brother arrived. The co-workers didn't see Agharaad again until yesterday, when they visited his western Henrico County home to give him a $500 check from their employer, Wheat Systems Integration in Glen Allen, to go toward replacing his van.
"I'm glad you stopped. Thank you very, very much," Agharaad told them. A native of Lebanon, Agharaad immigrated to the United States in 1979.
Agharaad also received two motorized wheelchairs from donors and said they're better than the one he lost.
One chair came from Chesterfield County resident Rebekah Jeffreys and her mother, Mildred Gaskins, who responded to local television news reports about what happened.
"I wanted to give it to somebody who could really use it. I didn't want to sell it," Jeffreys said. "We all have our problems. If it could be a blessing to somebody, I wanted to do that."
Contact Melodie N. Martin at (804) 649-6290 or mmartin@timesdispatch.com.
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