Man wrenched dying man from fiery crash before Emanuel Cleaver arrived

It’s not that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver wasn’t helping at the accident or didn’t have blood staining his hands.

“He was there,” Jimmy Sorensen said of a fatal collision that occurred Friday near 11 a.m. when a black Corvette heading east along Gregory Boulevard swerved into the westbound lane and slammed head-on into a white Ford F-150 pick-up truck near Crest Drive.

The driver of the Ford wasn’t seriously injured. But on Saturday afternoon, Kansas City Police identified the body of the Corvette’s driver as that of 32-year-old Christopher D. Roe Jr. of Raytown, Mo.

“I kept yelling, ‘Keep breathing! Keep breathing! Stay with us, buddy,” Sorensen said. “’We’ve got help on the way.’. . I think he died right in my arms.”

Soon after a fatal accident, press accounts focused on the Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, one of four people who aided Roe to safety before the Corvette became engulfed in flames. No one knows those details better than Sorensen who, still shaken Saturday by the events, was the first one to rush to help.

He and his uncle, diagnosed with terminal cancer, had been heading to pick up bird seed. They took a right hand turn onto Gregory.

“The white truck that was in the accident was in right in front of us,” Sorensen said. He heard an engine roar, which he later assumed was the Corvette’s, “like he was stomping on the gas,” Sorensen said. “All of a sudden the accident happened, a loud boom, smoke coming out of the truck. Then the Corvette caught on fire.”

Sorensen ran from his own truck to the side of the Corvette and yanked open the door.

“I saw the guy was unconscious,” Sorensen said. “But the fire had broken out. It was spreading quick. I mean it was starting to roll. So I grabbed a hold of him and pulled him out.

“He was a heavy, big guy. I grabbed his belt. I had his head in one arm and his belt in my left arm. I dragged him out of the car. I couldn’t hardly move him. I yelled for this guy who had his cell phone camera to help me pull him. He didn’t even stop filming to pull. So I’m pulling him across the street.”

Sorensen’s uncle tried to help, but was too weak. Sorensen had dragged Roe a bit away from the car by the time Cleaver and his 30-year-old Congressional deputy director, Manny Abarca, arrived.

“We both jumped out of the car,” Abarca said Saturday.

The two had been driving to a constituent meeting in Brookside. Abarca ran from his car to see to the man driving the Ford pickup-up.

“It was clear that he was limping,” Abarca said. “I told him to get back because I could see at that time that the Corvette was on fire.” Cleaver, meantime, hurried to the side of the Corvette, Abarca said, then looked to the flames.

“He was trying to round up dirt that was there to try to douse the fire,” Abarca said.

Sorensen then caught Abarca’s eye.

“He yelled out, ‘Help me. Help me,’” Abarca recalled. Sorensen, on his own, was struggling to drag Roe away from the car. Abarca rushed to his side. Sorensen doesn’t recall Cleaver being there in that moment, but Abarca said the Congressman also ran to where Sorensen, Abarca and Sorensen’s uncle were struggling the save Roe.

Sorensen had grabbed hold of Roe’s belt. But it snapped. The rescuers took hold of his pants.

“The driver’s head had fallen sort of backward,” Abarca said. Roe was bleeding from his mouth. “The Congressman yelled, ‘Stop, stop. His head. His head.’ He ran over and picked up his head. . . He cradled his head as we were moving him.”

Finally, Roe’s body was away from the burning car. Sorensen held on to him until paramedics arrived.

In a recorded statement, Cleaver on Friday told television news, “We got him out. He was unconscious. We couldn’t even lift him completely up. We had to drag him out of the car. I held his head up because it was bleeding very badly.”

Later, his office would release an official statement softening the Congressman’s role. “I was just helping the same as every other person on the scene,” Cleaver said in the statement. “Tonight, my prayers will be for this man and his family during this holiday season.”

Sorensen said he was upset on Friday night when he saw news items that he didn’t believe presented a true picture of events.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to get credit,” Sorensen said. “I couldn’t believe that Congressman Cleaver was taking my story, what I actually lived through, and went through, and made it his own. The Congressman didn’t have blood all over his clothes. He didn’t look at a guy take his last breath.”

Heather Frierson, Cleaver’s spokeswoman, said that in the midst of a trauma it was never the Congressman’s intention to conflate his role or to even make note of his role. Nothing about the incident appears on the Congressman’s Facebook page or Twitter account.

“He did not want to talk to the press initially,” Frierson said. “He was there and was helping. I don’t want to make it seem like the Congressman was making himself out to be a hero. That is far from the truth.”

The truth is, Sorensen said, that after the accident, he drove to a nearby QuikTrip where he washed off the blood that covered the area from his hands up to his elbows. At Starbucks in Brookside, Abarca and Cleaver did the same..

This story was originally published November 24, 2018 at 6:33 PM.