Good Samaritan tries to help woman, gets stuck in sunroof

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- A Good Samaritan was trying to help a woman get into her car in Manchester, New Hampshire, but instead rescue crews had to help her out.

“This is a small thing compared to what’s going on in the rest of the world, but if we don’t start helping each other here - our neighbors and the people who live right next door to us - we’re not going to be able to help anybody else,” said

Paying it forward for Danielle Michoud got her stuck, learning a tough lesson.

She and her husband tried to help a woman who was locked out of her car at a Manchester Walgreens parking lot. The alarm system wouldn’t recognize the key.

“The sunroof was open about three-quarters of the way, I was the smallest of the three of us, I offered to climb in,” said Michoud.

A mother herself, Michoud knew the stranger had a child waiting alone to be picked up, so in she went.

“I actually thought I almost had it and then I hit my ribs and I couldn’t go any further. I could not go up. I could not go down,” said Michoud.

She says out of the 50 or so people passing by where she was wedged to the waist in the sunroof, many stopped, but it wasn’t to help her.

“They were taking pictures, they were filming, they were laughing,” said Michoud.

It took firefighters using a portable airbag to finally get her out.

“What we do is we’ll connect an airline to this and this bag will open about ten inches, so this will push the sunroof open,” said Jeff Wilkinson of the Manchester, New Hampshire Fire Department.

Michoud admits the situation was funny at first glance, but says that people need to think twice.

“If we’ve become so desensitized that we would rather stop and take a picture first then to offer someone help, then we are going in the wrong direction,” said Michoud.

Michoud has a bruised rib and a bruised back. She went to the emergency room for treatment. She says even knowing the way that it turned out she would do it all again because it’s the right thing to do.

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