Boy, 6, helps mom in crash near Albany

BERNE -- Aaron Wright is barely old enough to tie his shoes, but he knows what to do when you need to think quick and there isn't a second to spare.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Aaron and his mother had just been in a car accident. The car flipped as it skid off the pavement and rolled down a snow-covered, 150-foot embankment.

When it came to a stop, Aaron's mother, Nikki Dober, was slipping in and out of consciousness, dangling in her seat belt in the driver's seat of her overturned 1999 Chrysler Cirrus.

Aaron, 6, immediately squeezed out of the backseat, grabbed his mother's pocketbook and trudged up the steep, slick incline that, to a young child, must have seemed as though it were a high peak of the Adirondacks.

Once he reached the summit, Aaron pulled his mom's cellphone out of her bag and dialed 911 as passersby pulled up to the scene.

"In my line of work, you don't get a chance to send out a whole lot of positive news," said acting Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple. "He's a smart little fella."

Apple gave this account:

The events unfolded just after noon when Dober was driving southbound on Joslyn School Road, a two-mile connection between routes 85 and 443 near Albany. When she took her eyes of the road for one second, the sedan started to cross into the other lane.

When Dober looked up, she saw a pickup truck bearing down in the opposite direction and swerved back to avoid it. But Dober overcompensated and turned too fast and too hard to her right, sending the car tumbling down the embankment.

Once the car came to a stop on its roof on the cold, snowy earth, Aaron freed himself and made his ascent.

Apple said the driver of the pickup truck that nearly collided with Dober's sedan stopped and ran back for help. Several other motorists stopped and dialed 911, too.

But Aaron beat them all to the punch.

Berne and Westerlo fire departments quickly got to the scene and were able to carefully pull Dober from her battered sedan.

Dober and her son were both rushed by ambulance to Albany Medical Center, but suffered only minor injuries and were later released.

No one was home at Dober's listed address Sunday and the family could not be reached for comment.

Apple said no charges would be filed against either driver.

"The little guy did it entirely on his own," Apple said. "We always preach to kids to contact law enforcement. It's nice to see the message get across."