On-screen actor Danny Trejo usually plays a rough criminal or villain but on Wednesday, he became a hero who rescued a baby that was trapped in an overturned car following a crash in Los Angeles, California.
The impact was enough to cause the SUV to overturn and eventually come to rest on its roof.
Trejo recounted how he had tried but failed to free a baby that had been trapped in the SUV. Another bystander, a young lady, had reached in from one side of the vehicle to unbuckle the seat belt, enabling Trejo to free the baby from the other side.
“A young lady had to crawl through the window because I couldn’t get the baby out. I couldn’t unbuckle the seat belt [myself],” Trejo said. “She got in and undid the seat belt, I pulled the baby out the other side.”
The other bystander, Monica Jackson, said a woman inside the car kept repeating, “Get my baby, get my baby.”
“The only thing that saved that little kid was his car seat,” Trejo said, according to KTLA.
“We got kind of a bond. I kept facing him away from the accident,” Trejo told KABC, adding that he works with special-needs children, which helped him to keep the boy calm.
Both Trejo and Jackson left a simple piece of advice to drivers in the area: “Pay attention.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department told KABC that three people were taken to a hospital and that their injuries were not life-threatening.
“Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else,” Trejo told KABC. “Everything.”
Trejo began acting at the age of 33. He was usually cast in Robert Rodriguez’s films and is perhaps best known for playing the character Machete—one he originally developed for the Spy Kids movie series—if not other characters that are named after knives in other Rodriguez films.
Most recently he was the voice of Boots in the film Dora and the Lost City of Gold.
Trejo has also founded eateries in Los Angeles, including Trejo’s Tacos, Trejo’s Cantina, and Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts.
