Vacation for NYPD cop from Plainview starts with a lifesaving effort

For an NYPD officer from Plainview, the first few hours of his vacation had the makings of a special day.

Sgt. Thomas Denicker and his wife were on their way through West Hills on Round Swamp Road to show his relatives in Huntington the fourth member of the family — their 2-month-old daughter.

As Denicker drove by Highhold Drive, he came upon an unexpected scene.

Engulfed in flames that May 12 afternoon was a minivan Suffolk police would later say had left the road before crashing into a fence, tree and brick wall outside a home. Denicker got closer and he and his wife saw a Good Samaritan and a uniformed U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent trying to pull two people from the burning wreck.

"So I pull over, I tell my wife to call 911 and I ran to the car," Denicker, 35, said, referring to the minivan. "The car was on fire. I never responded to a car on fire like this before in my 10 years I’ve been a police officer."

Denicker said a woman, later identified by police as 73 and from Melville, was out of the van by the time he had offered to help. But still inside was a man in a wheelchair.

The cop, the customs agent, and the Good Samaritan worked together to free the man, 36, also of Melville.

"The customs officer handed the civilian a [cutting tool] and he cut the straps as I helped maneuver the wheelchair," Denicker said, adding they were able to "lift him out from the back and we just got [him] out."

Amid the need to think fast, Denicker said he had thoughts of his former NYPD partner, Officer Anastasios Tsakos. The East Northport resident was struck and killed last month on the Long Island Expressway in Queens by an alleged drunken driver as he directed traffic from an earlier crash.

"He was definitely running through my mind," Denicker said of the 14-year NYPD veteran. "I’m just glad we were able to get them out."

Afterward, Denicker, who is based at the 108th Precinct in Long Island City, and his fellow rescuers went their separate ways. He never got the names of the two people who he assisted.

In a tweet after the NYPD first posted details of the rescue on its Twitter page, police Commissioner Dermot Shea had praise for Denicker.

"Off duty or on, the mission remains the same: help people," Shea said in his tweet. "And that’s just what Sgt. Denicker did. Truly one of NY’s #finest."

For his part, Denicker said anyone else who might have come upon the burning minivan would have done the same thing.

Had he and the others not been there to help, "I don’t know how it would have turned out," Denicker said.