Pasco man sends thanks to mystery good Samaritans who saved his life

NEW PORT RICHEY (FOX 13) - A Pasco County motorcyclist is hoping to track down the good Samaritans who saved his life after he was in a near-deadly accident last month.

Richard Malas, 48, was riding his motorcycle down Grand Boulevard on May 3 at around 10:30 p.m. when a car slammed into him at the intersection near Marine Parkway.

"I remember coming over the bike. I remember landing on my head and flipping on my side and my leg flipped up, hit me in the face and didn't go back down on its own," Malas said Tuesday. "I remember screaming, 'My leg, it's broke! It's broke!'"

His left leg was mangled. The injury caused him to black out, but he could still hear what was happening.

"All of a sudden I heard these two voices, of these guys, and they were screaming, 'Give me a belt! Give me a belt!'" he remembered.

At least two good Samaritans had stopped to help and turned a belt into a tourniquet. Malas' doctor later told him the action of those men likely saved his life.

"[The doctor] says I was lucky they were there on the scene because another three to five minutes and I would have bled out," he said.

Surgeons ended up taking most of Malas' leg. He spent more than three weeks in the hospital.

Now, he and his wife are left with an appreciation for the strangers who saved him.

"They're courageous, great people," he said. "Most of them would have just been onlookers and left me laying there on the ground."

"They're my hero," added his wife, Wendy Malas. "I want to thank them with all my heart for saving his life because, if they didn't stop, he wouldn't be here."

The couple hopes the people who stopped to help see their story and will reach out.

"I'd really like to meet them and say thanks in person because without them I wouldn't be here today," Richard said.

He hopes he'll be able to begin learning how to walk on a prosthetic leg before the end of the year.