Amid I-4 chaos, deputy kept his cool

By ABBIE VANSICKLE, Times Staff Writer
Published January 12, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT Deputy Jack Carlton Turner III, 26, told his grandmother he used his patrol car as a buffer between the explosions and the crash survivors.

TAMPA - The deputy got out of his battered patrol car, surrounded by a ring of fire. The car ahead of him burned. So did the one behind him.

In the thick fog and smoke, there were other survivors, unsure of what to do. He spotted guide wires in the middle of the highway and knew they were a way out of disaster.

Much later, he had no idea how he managed to survive.

That's what Polk County sheriff's Deputy Jack Carlton Turner III told his grandma, Alice Turner, in a phone call the day after the crashes on I-4 that injured 38 people and killed four.

When she heard that her 26-year-old grandson had saved lives and witnessed tragedy, she didn't doubt it. But she wanted to be sure he wasn't hurt.

"I said, 'Son, you know I've always been proud of you,' " she recalled Friday. "I could see him grinning through the phone."

He told her not to worry, that he was all right, she said.

"I'm doing fine," he told a St. Petersburg Times reporter Friday, before declining to speak further about Wednesday's interstate disaster. The deputy said he will appear at a Sheriff's Office news conference Monday in Bartow.

Mrs. Turner, 79, of Winter Haven said her grandson isn't the sort to seek the spotlight but that his actions at the crash site were heroic.

"He said he managed to hold his car together. The car in front of him exploded. The car behind him exploded," she said.

He told her he turned his car sideways and used it as a buffer between the explosions and the crash survivors, telling people to lie on the ground behind the cruiser for protection, she said.

"He said, 'I told them to hold onto the wires and work their way through, out of the fire, to get to my car and lie down because there were going to be more explosions,'" she recalled.

She had heard reports that he saw a man burn and wasn't able to save him. Her grandson said, yes, that was true, she said.

After it was over, the Polk Sheriff's Office gave him time off to recover. He told his grandma that he had pains in his neck and other body aches and that he planned to see a psychiatrist, she said.

In the meantime, he's staying with a friend in Lakeland and using a borrowed cell phone, she said.

Mrs. Turner said the deputy's parents are divorced and that his mother lives in Virginia and his father is a missionary on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Neither could be reached for comment.

Her grandson grew up in Polk County and went to high school there, she said. She lived down the street from him on Lake Albert Drive.

She calls him "Little Carlton" because his father and grandfather share the same name.

He always seemed to do well at whatever he tried, whether it was fixing up a motorcycle or learning to be a law enforcement officer.

"Anything that young man sets his mind to, he can do it," she said.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Abbie VanSickle can be reached at vansickle@sptimes.com or 813 226-3373.

911 call

Deputy Turner: "6091. ... We need ... definitely signal 35 out here. I still hear cars hitting. We need to get this eastbound shut down now. There's approximately, probably 20, 25 cars here, and my car has been hit several times."

Operator: "Ten-four. What's your exact 10-20 on I-4? And they're trying to raise you on channel four."

Deputy Turner: "I am ... eastbound. ...I'm eastbound (at) 559."

Operator: "Ten-four. It's a 10-39."

[Last modified January 12, 2008, 01:56:25]