Two off-duty NYPD officers who had never met before are being hailed as heroes after they pulled over to rescue a family who had been in a car crash.

Officers Gary A. Tagliaferri and Marco A. Morrone were each driving in their own vehicles last Saturday on the Taconic State Parkway in Yorktown, New York when they came upon a horrifying scene. They saw an overturned van resting on the guardrail with one young boy lying in the street and another boy on the grass on the other side of the guardrail.

The parents of the boys were pinned in the vehicle, with the father trapped in the driver’s seat and the mother in the front seat with barely a pulse. Gary and Marco knew right away that this was going to be a difficult rescue.

“You heard the sounds of the two children. Both were moaning and making agony-like sounds,” Gary said. “There were parts of the vehicle everywhere. Contents of what was inside the vehicle were everywhere … I remember seeing a shoe in the middle of the road. It was a dramatic scene, and a lot to take in.”

Without hesitating, each of the officers jumped out of the vehicles to assist. Gary and Marco went to each of the little boys first, making sure that each were stable. After instructing other Good Samaritans on how to give them aid, the officers each ran to the van, which is where they met.

“I saw Officer Gary. We don’t know each other, but I remember looking at him and saying, ‘We need to go check on the van,'” Marco recalled.

They then found a third child, a little girl who cried, “Where’s my mommy? Where’s my mommy?”

They found that the girl had minor injuries before turning their attention to the mother and father.

“What I saw was the father driver pinned down in the driver’s seat, and the wife was pinned down in the passenger seat, hanging over towards him and held by her seat belt,” Marco said.

Since the windshield was already smashed, they pulled the father out that way. The mother was still trapped to the seat by her seatbelt, which had to be cut.

“I checked her pulse, and I pretty much didn’t feel anything,” Marco said. “I did a very, very quick chest compression, which I guess woke her up and she moved her head.”

They were able to get the mother out of the vehicle after cutting her seatbelt, and once she was out, a nurse who had stopped to help raised her pulse by giving her chest compression.

The family was rushed to the hospital, and the father and three children were treated for minor injuries. The mother is in critical condition, but doctors say that they think she will live.

The officers were just happy that they were able to assist.

“With Officer Morrone and the other civilians, we managed that scene in what I thought was a professional and highly trained manner with what we’re accustomed to doing,” Gary said.

God bless these officers for doing whatever it took to save this family!