2 transit officers aid in rollover crash inside tunnel

BOSTON (WHDH) -- Two transit officers are being credited with helping a 5-year-old girl and her father who were in a rollover crash inside the Tip O’Neill Tunnel.

Video from inside the tunnel shows the car fish tailing and colliding with the guard rail.

"The car was like, going this way and going that way and then it stopped and then it just flipped over," said 5-year-old Jocelyn Clayton, who was in the car.

Jocelyn was in the back seat and her mother's fiance, Edward Butler, was behind the wheel. Wednesday afternoon, they were on their way to pick up Jocelyn's mother in Somerville, but Butler lost control. The car suddenly shot across several lanes, and smashed into the wall. 

The accident happened within 50 feet from two MBTA police officers.

“I remember saying to my partner, ‘This is happening -- just get on the air, send everybody,’” Patrick Guilfoy of the MBTA transit police department.

The sedan ended up on its roof, and Jocelyn was left dangling upside down. The detective said the child and her father were trapped -- the little girl was entangled in her seatbelt.

“She was pretty shaken up about it…I made I contact with her, she realized I was trying to help her,” said Guilfoy.

“They [were] both in shock -- she’s crying,” said Elizabeth Dumas of the MBTA transit police department.

Dumas said while Guilfoy and a civilian worked to get the victims out, she was trying to calm them down.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” said Dumas.

Officials said the civilian was also there at the right time -- she had a crowbar and a knife. She cut the seatbelt and rescued both the child and her father.

“I heard the child screaming, ‘Daddy, daddy’ -- the father was obviously traumatized,” said Guilfoy.

The father and daughter are doing fine.